Die ou woordjie “welkom” het deesdae verskillende betekenisse in ons wonderlike post-moderne kultuur. Daarom moet jy baie mooi luister wanneer iemand vir jou sê “welkom” want dit mag miskien net wees dat hy vir jou lieg. Wanneer Jesus Christus iemand welkom geheet het, het Hy dit altyd opreg en so reg uit sy hart uit bedoel. Hy het niemand weggestoot, verstoot of verdryf wat na Hom gekom het nie. Sy welkom was ‘n “genuine” welkom want Hy kon en kan nog steeds nie lieg nie omdat Hy waarlik God is. Ook sy ware dissipels (volgelinge) behoort netsoos Hy almal wat na hulle kom met hartlike, ope en welkome arms te ontvang omdat Jesus hulle geleer het om soos HY te wees en soos HY te wandel.

Hy wat sê dat hy in Hom bly, behoort self ook so te wandel soos Hy gewandel het. [1 Johannes 2:6]

Maar nouja, ons weet almal dat die Satan die een is wat onverpoos lieg omdat hy die vader van alle leuens is.

Julle het die duiwel as vader, en die begeertes van julle vader wil julle doen. Hy was ‘n mensemoordenaar van die begin af en staan nie in die waarheid nie, omdat daar in hom geen waarheid is nie. Wanneer hy leuentaal praat, praat hy uit sy eie, omdat hy ‘n leuenaar is en die vader daarvan. [Johannes 8:44]

Oeps, Johannes, dink jy nie miskien jy het dit te kras gestel nie? Kon jy nie maar liewer so ‘n toegewinkie hier en daar maak nie? Ek dink byvoorbeeld aan die ouens wat vir jou sê “jy’s welkom” maar dit nie eintlik bedoel nie. Dis darem mos nie so erg nie, is dit?

Toe ek onlangs na ‘n lang ruk weer op die virtuele e-kerk se webblad ingaan en Stephan Joubert se welkom video kyk het ek gedink: “Fantasties! Daar’s so baie vrae wat ek wil vrae, veral nou dat hy in die openbaar geb(l)ieg het dat sy e-kerk nog nooit deel was van die “Emerging Church” en ander mities nie. Ek het sommer dadelik hulle intekenaarvormpie ingevul (ek was so eerlik dat ek selfs my regte gebooortedatum verstrek het) en . . . en . . . siedaar ek was skielik een van die nuutste lede van e-kerk. Hoera! Ek moes myself natuurlik ‘n paar keer knyp om seker te maak dat ek nie droom nie, maar so wragtig Stephan en sy span het my so wrintie toegelaat om een van hulle gespreksgenote, verhoudingsmaatjies, medereisigers, ens. ens. te word. Miskien, het ek gedink, het hulle my onvoorwaardelik aanvaar omdat ons in die Kersgety was en Kersfees is mos ‘n  tyd van www (willenswetende-welkome-welwillendheid).

Soos reeds gesê, ek het baie vrae op my gemoed gehad (Stephan het ons geleer om soos kinders te wees wat voortdurend baie vrae vra) en sonder om toe te laat dat ‘n enkele grashalmpie onder my voete groei het ek dadelik aan die werk gespring. Hier volg die drie van my kommentare wat hulle aanvanklik op hulle webblad geplaas het.

Kommentaar deur Tom Lessing 3 ure gelede

Paulus het sekere Griekse digters aangehaal en dit as aanknopingspunt gebruik om die Evangelie van Jesus Christus aan die Atheners wat vir niks anders tyd gehad het as om iets nuuts te sê en te hoor nie, te verkondig. Hul beheptheid met nuwe dinge het gemaak dat hulle nooit tevrede was met die ou gebaande paaie in hulle veelgodedom godsdiens nie, in die mate dat hulle ‘n altaar vir ‘n onbekende God opgerig het. Paulus het hulle Griekse digters aangehaal maar nooit gesê dat wanneer die Atheners hulle monde oopmaak hulle die suiwer Evangelie verkondig nie.

So-ook is die leiersfigure van die Ontluikende Kerk en hulle navolgers nooit tevrede met die ou gebaande paaie in die Christendom nie (Jeremia 6:16). Hulle is voortdurend besig om God se Woord te her-verwoord, te verander en aan te pas by die kulture van ons tyd, kwansuis om die post-moderne mens met al hulle komplekse vrae en probleme makliker vir die Here te bereik. Brian McLaren het byvoorbeeld ‘n boek geskryf, getiteld “Everything must Change. ‘ Nelus Niemandt haal vir Leonard Sweet in sy boek “Nuwe Drome vir Nuwe Werklikhede” aan wat gesê het: “A sea change of transitions and transformations is birthing a whole new world and a whole new set of ways of making our way in the world.” Waarom moet alles verander as Jesus die enigste Waarheid, Weg en die Lewe self nooit verander nie? (Hebreers 13:8).

Soos Paulus haal die “Emergents” mekaar lustig aan en lees ook mekaar se boeke. Daar’s natuurlik niks daarmee verkeerd nie. Ek doen dit ook. Maar sodra jy soos Stephan Joubert wat hulle gereeld aanhaal en hulle boeke lees sê: “Rob Bell — ek het hom al sien optree — baie keer. Hy stap op daai verhoog, met sy swart bril en sy weird klere en sy kitaar, maar as hy sy mond oopmaak dan is dit die Evangelie. Dieselfde met Dan Kimball”

Hoe nou gemaak? Sodra iemand soos Rob Bell wat die Bybelse leerstellings van Christus se maagedlike geboorte en die bestaan van die hel bevraagteken as ‘n suiwer evangelieprediker geprys word, dan’s daar groot fout. Paulus het nooit so-iets gedoen nie.

Kommentaar deur Tom Lessing 2 ure gelede

“IS EKERK UITVERKOOP AAN CHRISTUS? Ja, Hy is die Een, die enigste Een! Hy IS en bly die regie roete Godwaarts!”

Wat my ietwat dronkslaan is dat Stephan ruiterlik erken dat Jesus die enigste Weg, Waarheid en Lewe is, maart og ontken hy dat Joh 14:6 die post-moderne mens kan oortuig dat Jesus inderdaad sê wie Hy is. Hy verklaar op e-church:

Don’t get me wrong — I believe John 14:6 with my whole heart: Jesus is the way, the truth and the life. He is the only One! But I also know that people who dont believe this will probably never be convinced if I Keep on providing them with unintelligible answers to even stranger questions. Their question to me/us would probably be something like: “Show me the money! Show me in your own life what it menas to follow Jesus, then we could probably have a conversation. Ist’s not so much our beliefs, but our integrity in terms of following Jesus in the smallest details of our lives through service, sacrifice, humility and generosity that will provide intelligible answers to the right questions here in our day.

Nie eens Jesus kon Jersualem oortuig dat Hy die Weg, Waarheid en lewe is met sy dienswerk en nederigheid nie (Matt 23:37). Wat laat ons dink dat ons dit kan doen? Selfs Alice Bailey, een van die voorbankers van die New Age, het verklaar dat dit ons diens, offervaardigheid, mildadigheid en nederigheid is wat ‘n verskil in die wereld maak. Dis nie wat die Bybel ons leer nie:

Die geloof is dus uit die gehoor, en die gehoor is deur die woord van God [Rom 10:17]

Kommentaar deur Tom Lessing 2 ure gelede

Daar’s een ding wat my van Stephan Joubert beïndruk en dit is dat hy nog altyd volgehou het dat om’n volgeling van Jesus te wees, beteken nie om Sondag na Sondag die kerkbanke vol te sit en met vroom gesig die belydenisskrifte op te sé nie. Julian Muller wat nie in ‘n letterlike nie maar ‘n metaforiese opstanding van Jesus glo, spog daarmee dat hy die geloofsbelydenis elke Sondag opsê (Matt 15:8).

Een van die mans wat saam met Jesus gekruisig is, het Hom tydens sy lewe nooit gevolg nie en tog het die Here hom gered. Waarom? Omdat sy krom en verdraaide siening rondom die leerstelling aangaande Jesus Christus uiteindelikvoor sy dood regestel is. Johannes, die apostel van liefde, het nie vernietgesé nie:

Elkeen wat ‘n oortreder is en nie bly in die leer van Christus nie, hy het God nie. Wie in die leer van Christus bly, hy het die Vader sowel as die Seun. [2 Jn 1:9]

Na aanleiding hiervan wil ek baie graag vir Stephan vra waarom hy tydens ‘n konferensie by die Mosaïek Kerk in Fairlands, Johannesburg gesé het: “Jesus never linked onto the priestly story” (Leviticus). Dis mos totaal ongehoord om so-iets te sé. Is die offers in Levitikus dan nie juis deur God ingestel om aan te dui op watter wyse en wat die betekenis is van Jesus Christus se kruisdood nie. Hoe kon HY hom daarvan distansieer (“not link Himself to it”) as Hy dit self ingestel het?

Ek glo nie die horlosie het 24 uur verbygetik nie toe ek verneem dat hulle my met welkome verligting vir ewig en altoos van hulle webblad verban het. So lyk die verbannings kennisgewing.

Ek glo vas dat hulle my inderdaad wederegtelik verban het. Al wat ek gedoen het was om Stephan woord vir woord aan te haal en met opregtheid vir hom te vra om daarop the reageer. Gewoonlik is die antwoord: “Jy het my uit konteks aangehaal.” Dit was ook Julian Muller se “famous” woorde toe hy Sarel van der Merwe se video “Nuwe Strominge in the Teologie” gekritiseer het. Ek kon nog nooit verstaan waarom hierdie ouens vir jou kwaad word wanneer jy hulle eie woorde herhaal en aanhaal nie. Ons leer uit die mond van die Here Jesus dat:-

. . . van elke ydele woord wat die mense praat, daarvan moet hulle rekenskap gee in die oordeelsdag. Want uit jou woorde sal jy geregverdig word, en uit jou woorde sal jy veroordeel word. [Mat 12:36-37]

Ook hulle sal eendag voor die regterstoel van Jesus moet staan om verantwoording te doen vir die dinge wat hulle gesê het. Ek kan maar net raai wat hulle vir Jesus gaan sê wanneer HY hulle gaan herinner wat hulle op daardie dag, op daardie uur en op daardie minuut gesê het.

Nee wag so ‘n bietjie, Jesus. Dis darem nou nie “fair” om my buite konteks aan te haal nie. Het Paulus dan nie ook self die heidense Griekse digters aangehaal om vir hulle te vertel dat U die onbekende God is nie?

Ek kry toenemend die indruk dat Stephan Joubert nie vir Jesus nie maar vir Leonard Sweet volg want wat hy ookal doen en sê so doen en sê hy hom presies agterna.

Lennie: Kom Stephan, volg my. Die "Emergent Church" is reeds verouderd. Ons moet iets nuuts vind soos die ouens daar in Handelinge 17

Mosaïek Conversations: Session 4 “Following Jesus into Galilee then and now” – by Trevor Hudson

Before I venture to evaluate Trevor Hudson’s very humble and moving talk in the light of Scripture I need to remind my readers that the biblical concept of following Jesus of Nazareth is not so much about “where to here on earth” but “how to here on terra firma according to God’s will.” Is it so important to make this distinction? Yes! because it inevitably defines and clarifies the person you are following – the real Jesus of the Bible or a counterfeit Jesus. To illustrate I would like to quote Stephan Joubert who said:

It’s not so much our beliefs, but our integrity in terms of following Jesus in the smallest details of our lives through service, sacrifice, humility and generosity that will provide intelligible answers to the right questions here in our day.

Joubert firmly states that he believes Jesus is the only Way, Truth and Life (John 14:6) and yet when we consider what he says in the above quotation it is rather difficult to believe that he really means what he says he believes. Allow me to insert in brackets what he believes to illustrate to you the dangerous paradox in his above statement.

Don’t get me wrong — I believe John 14:6 with my whole heart: Jesus is the way, the truth and the life. He is the only One! But I also know that people who don’t believe this will probably never be convinced if I keep on providing them with unintelligible answers to even stranger questions. Their question to me/us would probably be something like: “Show me the money! Show me in your own life what it menas (sic) to follow Jesus, then we could probably have a conversation!”  It’s not so much our beliefs [such as our belief that Jesus is the only Way, Truth and Life], but our integrity in terms of following Jesus in the smallest details of our lives through service, sacrifice, humility and generosity that will provide intelligible answers to the right questions here in our day.

This reminds me of what Theo Geyser, the brother of Johan Geyser of the Mosaïek Church in Fairlands Johannesburg, said in his God dishonoring series of programs on SABC2 “What Does God Think of Us.” He said:

What if the approach need (sic) to be like Jesus, to be more interested in the person than in the method or the expression of their faith?

If people can never be convinced by the biblical doctrine and the Holy Spirit that Jesus is the only Way, Truth and Life what makes Stephan Joubert think that his puny efforts through service, sacrifice, humility and generosity can accomplish such a great supernatural feat? The audacious contemplation of  such an impossibility does not come from a heart molded in humility but in downright arrogance, conceitedness and pride. Sorry Jesus, your teaching that you are the only Way, Truth and Life may be infallibly true but there is something more congenial and seeker-friendly that might just do the trick to convince hard-hearted people of your uniqueness as the only Way, Truth and Life and that is our service, sacrifice, humility and generosity.”

The rabble who witnessed Jesus Christ’s crucifixion also wanted Him to SHOW them that He was the Son of God by shouting: “He saved others; himself he cannot save. If he be the King of Israel, let him now come down from the cross, and we will believe him  [Matthew 27:42]. Show us that you are the Son of the Living God by coming down from the cross and we could probably have a conversation.” Suffice to say at this stage, is that to follow the real Jesus of the Bible does not necessarily immunize you against persecution, tribulation and poverty. The church at Smyrna did not suffer poverty (“penia,” the normal Greek word used for poverty) but extreme poverty (“ptōcheian”). Imagine the residents of Smyrna coming to the local church and asking them: ““Show us the money! Show us in your own life what it means to follow Jesus, then we could probably have a conversation!” Their chronic poverty would have disqualified them immediately as followers of Jesus, that’s if following Him was measured by the amount of money one has and one’s generous giving. Stephan Joubert would probably have told them to sell their church, give the money to the poor and follow Jesus as he had done at a conference held at the Moreleta Park DRC where George Barna appeared as guest speaker earlier this year. Judas Iscariot said something very similar when he hypocritically took a stance in favor of the poor: “Why was not this ointment sold for three hundred pence, and given to the poor? [John 12:5]

According to Joubert, life’s most profound questions such as “what are we doing here and where are we going?” are not answered intelligibly by the truth that Jesus is the only Way, Truth and Life but by our own good works and efforts in “following Him in the smallest details of our lives through service, sacrifice, humility and generosity.” God Himself says that His Word (doctrines, including the doctrine that Jesus is the only Way, Truth and Life) “is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” (It reveals and brings to light the real character and intentions of everyone whose life’s questions are supposedly never answered by God’s Word) [Hebrews 4:12]. “No, no, no, no, you’ve got it all wrong, dear God,” Stephan Joubert would say. “It is not your Word (the doctrine that Jesus is the only Way, Truth and Life)) that provides all the answers to post-modern man’s questions. It is our pious following of Jesus into the severest storms and our humble service, compassion and generosity that opens their eyes to the Truth. 

Trevor Hudson had a wonderful opportunity to portray Jesus in his most glorious office as the Saviour of the world. Indeed, had he stuck to the biblical text and introduced the city of Galilee and its wicked inhabitants truthfully (respected historians and Bible scholars agree that Galilee was one of the most wickedest and sinful cities in the time of Jesus), he would have glorified the Light that entered into a place where the people dwelt in utter darkness (sin and ignorance of the Truth) [Matthew 4:15-16]. No wonder it was depicted as a place where darkness prevailed and where people lived in the shadow of death. Like a true modern-day emergent follower of Jesus Christ, Trevor Hudson completely ignores the central message of Jesus’ mission to Galilee and uncermoniously abandons the “abstract” teachings of Jesus in favor of  a more humble and compassionate approach to the problems in Galilee.

The very first thing Trevor Hudson brings to our attention is not that Galilee’s inhabitants, rich and poor, needed to hear the Gospel of salvation so that they may be saved but the painful contrast between the sacandalous oppolence of Herod and his family as opposed to the raw needs of the people. “That was Galilee?” Really? If that was the total sum of Galilee then Jesus’s great light shone into the darkness merely to illuminate and temporally alleviate the painful contrast between the rich and the poor. Moreover, Trevor Hudson says exactly what Stephan Joubert said so opulently and lavishly beautiful about Jesus (the only Way, Truth and Life) not being the final answer to today’s complex questions; NO! the answers to their problems lie in our “following [of] Jesus in the smallest details of our lives through service, sacrifice, humility and generosity.” The overwhelming human need, divisions and animostity between the Jews and the Gentiles could not, in Trevor Hudson’s estimate, be resolved by any abstract truth but through personal involvement in the alleviation of the raw human needs of the people in Galilee. Who are they following – Jesus, Mother Teresa or Alice Bailey? It can’t be Jesus of the Bible because He lauded the raw needs (poverty) of the Church at Smyrna in the Book of Revelation and the painful contrast between the opulence of the rich and the famous and the extremely poor church in Smyrna.

I know your works and tribulation and poverty (but you are rich), and I know the blasphemy of those saying themselves to be Jews, and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan. Do not at all fear what you are about to suffer. Behold, the Devil will cast some of you into prison, so that you may be tried. And you will have tribulation ten days. Be faithful to death, and I will give you the crown of life. [Revelation 2:9-10]

Of the seven churches to whom John had to write only two, Smyrna (the extremely poverty stricken church) and Philadelphia were not rebuked. Doesn’t that say something to Stephan Joubert and Trevor Hudson, or are they so stubbornly blinded by their own macho service, sacrifice, humility and generosity that they cannot see the blessings of being poor and suffering tribulation? Listen up chappies, this is not and has never been about narrowing the gap between the rich and the poor and the alleviation of the modern-day Galileans’ suffering and their overwhelming need. Its about remaining faithful to Jesus Christ unto death and He will give you the glorious crown of life when you meet Him face to face one day. Stephan Joubert and Trevor Hudson seems to agree wholeheartedly with Alice Bailey who under the guidance of the demon,  Djwhal Khul, said the following:

“It is time that the church woke up to its true mission, which is to materialize the kingdom of God on earth, today, here and now . . . People are no longer interested in a possible heavenly state or a probable hell. They need to learn that the kingdom is here, and must express itself on earth . . . The way into that kingdom is the way that Christ trod. It involves the sacrifice of the personal self for the good of the world, and the service of humanity . . .“¹ (Emphasis added).

“The kingdom and the service!…

“We must grasp this; we must realize that we shall find release only in the service of the kingdom. We have been held too long by the dogmas of the past, and there is today a natural revolt against the idea of individual salvation through the blood sacrifice of Christ.… It is essential that today we face the problem of the relation of Christ to the modern world, and dare to see the truth, without any theological bias . . .It is quite possible that Christ is far more inclusive than we have been led to believe… We have preached a God of love and have spread a doctrine of hate. We have taught that Christ died to save the world and have endeavored to show that only believers could be saved . . . But Christ founded a kingdom on earth, wherein all God’s children would have equal opportunity of expressing themselves as sons of the Father. This, many Christians find impossible to accept . . . “Individual salvation is surely selfish in its interest and its origin. We must serve in order to be saved, and only can we serve intelligently if we believe in the divinity of all men and also in Christ’s outstanding service to the race. The kingdom is a kingdom of servers,  for every saved soul must without compromise join the ranks of those who ceaselessly serve their fellow men.“²

What Bailey says so enticingly and derogatorily outright about Christ being the only Saviour, i.e. “We have been held too long by the dogmas of the past, and there is today a natural revolt against the idea of individual salvation through the blood sacrifice of Christ  . . .” Stephan Joubert says with tongue in cheek. As a matter of fact, Joubert is slightly more subtle and far more dangerous in his approach to Christ’s doctrine that He is the only Way and Truth and Life. He says it with his mouth but conveniently sets it aside in his heart in favour of the notion that service, sacrifice, humility and generosity provides the answers to this life’s complex questions (Matthew 15:8, 9). Really? Not even Christ’s unselfish service to the multitudes in his day solved life’s complex questions in the Roman Empire. As I’ve already proven from Revelation 2 and verses 9 and 10, not even God’s people were immune to poverty and often suffered the consequences of having far too little. Moreover, Jesus never commanded his disciples to enter their own Galilees to encounter the raw needs of every poverty stricken person because THAT is supposedly the place where Jesus Christ meets us, “when we open our lives to real encounters with real people in real suffering, Christ comes to us, meets us, shapes, disturbs us, forms us [and] maybe even transforms us.”  God’s meeting place with sinners is the cross of Jesus Christ – only come to the cross. The erroneous teaching that Christ meets us when we encounter the raw needs of other people stems from the lie that Jesus is in everyone and everyone is in Jesus. To substantiate their misconception they refer you to Jesus’ words in Matthew 25:40 “Truly I say to you, Inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brothers, you have done it to Me.” [Matthew 25:40]. This is nothing else but heretic Campola-lism Here’s what Tony Campola says:

One of the most startling discoveries of my life was the realization that the Jesus that I love, the Jesus who died for me on Calvary, that Jesus, is waiting, mystically and wonderfully, in every person I meet. I find Jesus everywhere.³ . . .

I do not mean that others represent Jesus for us. I mean that Jesus actually is present in each other person.” . . . and  That a new humanity will be brought forth from this Christ consciousness in each person.⁴

. . . .what can I say to an Islamic brother who has fed the hungry, and clothed the naked? You say, “But he hasn’t a personal relationship with Christ.” I would argue with that. And I would say from a Christian perspective, in as much as you did it to the least of these you did it unto Christ. You did have a personal relationship with Christ, you just didn’t know it.⁵ (Emphasis added) [And this gentleman, a heretic in the true sense of the word, was invited by the Moreleta Park DRC to be their guest speaker at the Missions Fest in February 2010. It shows how far the Moreleta Park DRC has wandered down the apostasy path].

Tony Campola, Stephan Joubert, Trevor Hudson, Johan Geyser et al have an intimate marital relationship with their wives but they just don’t know it? Really? What a terrible insult this must be to their wives and if so, how much more must it be an insult to almighty God and his Son, Jesus Christ, when some people allegedly have a relationship with Him but they just don’t know it yet? Not only is it an insult but a blatant denial of God’s prerogative for salvation. Listen to his words in John 17: 3

And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent. [John 17:3]

Well, if you read Matthew 25:40 with blinkers over your eyes you won’t notice that Jesus was referring to his brothers and not every Tom, Dick and Harry who shuns his cross as mere foolishness (1 Corinthians 1:18). Who are his brothers and sisters? Well, He Himself once said:

But he answered and said unto him that told him, Who is my mother? and who are my brethren? And he stretched forth his hand toward his disciples, and said, Behold my mother and my brethren! For whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother.  [Matthew 12:48-50]

How do you know you are one of his brethren? Whoever embraces and clings to Christ’s cross as God’s only and ultimate power to save and sanctify repentant sinners is doing the will of the Father. And that is precisely why Jesus said: “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me?” Denying oneself is to do what Peter did when he denied his Lord, only in this instance it means to say to yourself “I don’t know you and your base selfish desires. In fact, I never want to know you.” Taking up your cross does not mean, as some Christians believe, to suffer any ill consequences due to any ill or unpleasant circumstances. You often hear Christians say: “I am desperately ill but I am prepared to bear this cross” or “My own family hate me because I believe in Jesus but I accept it as a cross I must bear.” That’s not taking up your cross. The cross was an instrument of death and when Jesus said to take up your cross He meant that you and I should die to our own egos (desires and self-will) so that we may live for God. Living a life of service, sacrifice, humility and generosity may win you the accolades of your fellowmen and the world but it is not the way to follow Jesus. There is only one way to follow Him (Matthew 16:24; Romans 6:1-4, 11).

There are many professing Christians who claim to follow Him but in fact are following another Jesus, simply because they have changed the concept of “following Jesus” into an altruistic endeavour of their own design. In their estimation the more you reach out in sacrificial love, compassion and service to the poor, the downtrodden, the marginalized and everyone who suffers, the better you are following Him. Hence the Emergent Church’s  besotted infatuation with Mother Teresa who cared for the sick and dying in Calcutta, India but never presented them with the saving Gospel of Jesus Christ. Stephan Joubert’s altruism has inspired him to follow Jesus even into the heart of every storm (I call this macho spiritual jargon).

Everything is different nowadays. Above is below. Below is upside down. Nothing is safe, fixed or predictable any more. It feels like life is out of control. . . . Well, here’s an important newsflash: Today’s world is all over the show. It is chaotic. The solution is not to try and get everything and everyone artificially back under control. There’s a better way: Follow Jesus into the heart of every storm. He thrives in storms, as I learn in John 6 and Matthew 14 (Read here).

It is evident that the emergent fraternity’s notion of following Jesus of Nazareth has everything to do with following Him into certain situations and circumstances (like raging storms) and nothing with His own definition of it. If this had been the way Jesus Christ intended his disciples to follow Him He would have been no different from Buddha who said “Whoever serves the sick and suffering, serves me.” After his so-called enlightenment the Buddha and his followers went from place to place spreading his Dharma (teachings) which revolved mainly around their altruistic work amongst the suffering and the destitute. Wherever they went they helped poor beggars, slave girls and the underdogs. He allegedly never became angry, not even at his opponents, but always encouraged people to have compassion for each other. In fact, compassion was the virtue that proved the genuineness of his followers’ discipleship.

We shall see, as we continue, that there is a major difference between a humanitarian kind of compassion and a divinely inspired compassion that comes to fruition only when you follow Jesus Christ according to his will (Mark 8:34). A Humanitarian compassion relates only to the temporal alleviation of man’s suffering on earth whilst a godly compassion reaches out to fallen man with the Gospel of Jesus Christ so that he may be saved from the righteous wrath and judgment of God. Allow me to elaborate. Natural disasters such as tsunamis, earthquakes, tornadoes as well as crimes against humanity, including  murder, rape and child abuse together with pandemic diseases such as AIDS and poverty are events and circumstances that easily awaken the compassion gene, if I may call it that, in people who really care about others. Even Hollywood actors and world-renown pop artists who openly and publically admit to their irreligious resolve become involved in some of the most compassionate humanitarian organizations. They are usually the ones who reach deep into their pockets and liberally give their money to alleviate the suffering of the victims. That’s great! We ought to do that! However, this is as far as it goes — their pockets.

How did Jesus react to disasters? One thing is certain, He never asked Judas who was the treasurer of their little band of twelve apostles (John 13:29), to give money to the victims. Indeed, He had no need of this, simply because He miraculously fed the hungry, healed the blind, the lame and the sick and resurrected the dead without any dependence on their financial resources. And yet He dared to say that his followers would do greater things. What is greater than the resurrection of the dead? There is but one thing and one thing alone, and that is to present lost sinners with the Gospel of God so that they may be saved for all eternity. Jesus was so deeply inflamed with his love for the lost that at times He seemed to be a little less compassionate than the Buddha. Consider the following event in the life of Jesus and ask yourself whether his response to disaster was the normal compassionate one you would expect of any compassionately inclined person. Incidentally, this incident relates to Galilee, the city into which his followers are encouraged to follow Him.

JUST AT that time there [arrived] some people who informed Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices. And He replied by saying to them, Do you think that these Galileans were greater sinners than all the other Galileans because they have suffered in this way? I tell you, No; but unless you repent (change your mind for the better and heartily amend your ways, with abhorrence of your past sins), you will all likewise perish and be lost eternally. Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them – do you think that they were more guilty offenders (debtors) than all the others who dwelt in  Jerusalem? I tell you, No; but unless you repent (change your mind for the better and heartily amend your ways, with abhorrence of your past sins), you will all likewise perish and be lost eternally. (Luke 13:1-5)

I can only imagine what Trevor Hudson, and his fellow Christ followers would have said to Jesus if they’d been there on that historic day.  

“Jesus, are you telling the people to ‘turn or burn?’ Could you not have shown a little more compassion by first offering your sincere condolences to the families who lost loved ones in the disasters instead of throwing them into the deep end of your doctrinal stance on salvation and bluntly telling them to repent lest they should be cast in hell and tormented for all eternity in its unquenchable flame? We would like to think that your harsh words ‘Unless you repent, you will likewise perish and be lost eternally’ is not what we think it is, – “turn or burn.” Is it what you meant when you said those terrible words? If that is what you meant, you need to repent and ask for forgiveness because you turned the beautiful word “repent” (“metanoia”) into something so horrible that no one can relate to you and follow you into Galilee.”

Let us now, at the behest of  Trevor Hudson, begin to follow Jesus into Galilee where Pilate mixed the blood of many Galileans with their sacrifices and where Jesus spoke very frankly about the need for repentance and the destination of those who refuse to repent. Consequently it may be a good thing to start off with Trevor Hudson’s personal opinion about repentance and to compare it with Jesus Christ’s outlook on repentance.

“That’s not what Jesus said?” No! Jesus never said “turn or burn” on that particular occasion but there were many other moments in his ministry when He said similar things to warn unrepentant sinners of their impending doom in hell. Perhaps we should not only follow Jesus into Galilee but everywhere else he went to get the full picture of his doctrine of the Lake of Fire. Here now follow some of the things He said as a warning to those who are unrepentant.

And if thy hand offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched: Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched. And if thy foot offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter halt into life, than having two feet to be cast into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched: Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched. And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out: it is better for thee to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye, than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire: Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched. [Mark 9:43-48]

Anyone may try to do some gymnastic somersaults around Jesus’ words but they will never be able to blame you for putting words in his mouth when you assent to his above words like one of his true followers into Galilee. The precondition for anyone to escape God’s righteous judgment is to repent (TURN) or bear the consequences in an eternal burning and unquenchable flame (BURN). In spite of Jesus’ emphatic demand for repentance and his lucid clarification of the consequences for those who remain unrepentant, Trevor Hudson boldly declares that repentance simply means to “let ‘God’ be ‘God.’” Yes! of course the Kingdom of God is within everyone’s reach and it is indeed for everyone but is the requirement to enter into God’s Kingdom simply to “let ‘God’ be ‘God?’” Imagine Jesus saying: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and ‘let God be God’”. [Mark 1:15]. Can you imagine what Peter would have had to say on the Day of Pentecost if Trevor Hudson’s kind of repentance to “let ‘God’ be ‘God’” was true?

Then Peter said unto them, “Let God be God, stop being so arrogant by thinking that you are in charge and stop playing God in your life and everyone else’s life as well. To repent you need to go on a journey from there to letting God be God. Does that make sense? Huh? Huh? Let Him be the God of compassion to you, in you, through you to others; let Him be the God of mercy to you, in you, through you to others; let Him be the God of justice to you, in you, through you to others and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.”  [Acts 2:38]

Letting God be God is NOT , I repeat, is NOT the Gospel and neither is merely believing that God is here, huh? huh? In fact, the maxim “let God be God” is a man-made concoction with a purpose to promote the interfaith movement worldwide. In an article written by Max Ediger, the Coordinator of Interfaith Cooperation Forum (ICF supports regional religious partnerships in working together for the transformation of society), he quotes a young man, Kim Houn an attendee of the “School of Peace (SOP) in 2007, who said:

“I’m an oppressor!  . . . As a Christian, I put God in a box and controlled the way God was supposed to relate to Muslims, Buddhists and Hindus. I didn’t want God to love them or to accept them unless they changed to be like me. [What does he mean? Does he mean to be like him in the sense of being saved? Paul once said: "Whether short or long, I would to God that not only you, but also all who are listening to me today, might become such as I am, except for these chains" (Acts 26:28-29). What he actutally means is that peoples of other faiths do not need to become redeemed Christians in order to follow Jesus. They can remain in their repsective faiths and still be ardent followers of Jesus]. When I go back to my home country, I am going to open the box and let God be God. And then I am going to follow God instead of trying to lead God.”

This is the kind of jargon you constantly hear among so-called Christ-followers who have fallen prey to the fallacious arguments the Emergent Church uses to silence those who cling to God’s doctrines,; they are quick to tell you  ”You’re putting God in a box,” or “you’re controlling the way God is supposed to relate to people of other faiths” and “your’e trying to change people to be like you. Well, of course it is wrong to try and change someone into your own image. That’s not what a true follower of Jesus Christ should aspire to do. His primary concern should be to present the Gospel (Good News) to people of other faiths so that they may be saved for all eternity and ultimately be transformed into the image of God’s Son, Jesus Christ.

Like so many other vitally important doctrines in the Bible the word “metanoia” (repent) has been so grossly distorted by the emergent fraternity that it has taken on a completely different meaning from its original usage. As you’ve heard from our audio clip above Trevor Hudson says that “The one thing I think I’ve discovered is that repentance doesn’t happen once and never happens again. Repentance is the doorway into the journey [and] it’s the pathway of the journey.” Jesus never said that repentance is the doorway into the journey and the pathway of the journey. He categorically stated that HE HIMSELF IS THE DOOR that leads into God’s Kingdom (John 10:9). Hudson is putting words in Jesus’ mouth.

Stephan Joubert upholds the very same heretic view of the meaning  of repentance. On page 8 of the brochure that was handed out at the Mosaic Congress held at the Mosaïek Church in Fairlands, Johannesburg from 4 to 5 September 2009, he quoted Thomas Moore from his book “Writing in the sand. Jesus and the Soul in the Gospels”

Metanoia is the process by which you enter the kingdom. [Ron Martoia says the very same thing: "Helping others identify and get in touch with the image of God in them is more of a process than a one-time transaction. And seeing the gospel through imago Dei calls for an apologetic that begins relationally, not just rationally"]. Jesus asks for a deep shift in worldview . . . One of the most difficult things to do is to change the way you imagine your place in life. Nothing is more challenging. On the other hand, once this takes place, nothing could be more vitalizing. Truly, it’s as if you are born a second time. Your eyes open to a different world . . . Metanoia comes at great cost. You are to give up an understanding of life that has been in place for a long time (Emphasis added).

If Metanoia had been a process to enter into the Kingdom of God then Jesus who is the only DOOR into the Kingdom would have been a processional door, meaning that you have to enter through Him bit by bit and step by step in a ritualistically altruistic kind of manner. Imagine entering your home in that way through the front door. Your wife would think you’re crazy and advise you to rather remain outside to spare you the agony of entering your home processionally. Jesus never, I repeat never, asked anyone for a deep shift in worldview. Why would He do that when He has already given us a biblical view of the world? Consider the following:

. . .  the whole world lieth in wickedness. [1John 5:19]

Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God. [James 4:4]

Metanoia comes at great cost? Really? In the biblical narritive of metanoia the repentant sinner loses his/her lostness and gains eternal life though faith in Jesus Christ. What kind of great cost is involved in that for the repentant sinner?

Repentance (“metanoia”) is to have your mind changed through the unadulterated preaching of the Word of God, to the extent that you become wholeheartedly willing to turn away from your longstanding object of trust (e.g. yourself which is but idolatry). This must go hand in hand with an act of faith and a wholehearted commitance to the new object of faith. Thus, to believe the Good News means to put your faith (trust) in Jesus, the Messiah (Anointed Son of God), as the only doorway to God’s Kingdom. Repentance cannot be isolated from faith in God’s Gospel (Good News) which is not merely a mental understanding that God is here and that his Kingdom is available to every kindred, tongue and race. Neither is “repent” an invitation; it is a command. In fact, it is a double command –  “And saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel. [Mark 1:15] Repentance and faith are irreversably bound toegether in a single package (not temporally successive acts). Once you’ve entered through the Door (Jesus) by putting your trust in Him and nothing else to save you, you are born from above and have no need to be born from above again and again. Yes, all God’s children sin again and again but they don’t need to repent again and again; they need to confess their sins and ask for forgiveness (1 John 2:1) What is the Gospel (Good News)? Is it enough to know, understand and acknowledge that God’s Kingdom is at hand and that He is here?

The Good News is: Because man is utterly powerless to save himself by whatever means at his disposal, God the Father (who is Spirit) sent his only begotten Son to become a man, like you and I but without sin, so that He could pay the just penalty for our sins on a cursed cross;  indeed, his Father passed judgment on our sins in his body on the cross (Isaiah 53:10). Furthermore, the Good News is that He came to seek and to save the lost (Luke 19:10). Who are the lost? Every single person who walks the earth is lost but there are very few who realize and acknowledge that they are lost. Jesus seeks them all but He only finds those who acknowledge and confess that they are lost (on their way to perdition in hell) and despreately need Him to be their Saviour.

In the next edition in this series of two parts we will be looking at the Emergent Chruch’s claim that they are followers of Jesus whilst their roll models are in fact corrupt haters of God and his Gospel.

———————————————–

¹ Alice Bailey, From Bethlehem to Calvary, Chapter Five – The Fourth Initiation, The Crucifixion

² Ibid

³  Tony Campolo in an address at Prestatyn in the UK, 1988

⁴ Tony Campolo “A Reasonable Faith” 1983 page 192 and 65.

⁵ Tony Campolo EVANGELICALS AND INTERFAITH COOPERATION, An Interview by Shane Claiborne

What is the most water tight proof that the Bible is the inspired Word of God? PROPHECY! If we take into account that every single prophecy concerning the first advent of Jesus Christ, His birth, death on the cross, resurrection and ascension were fulfilled one hundred per cent, we may know with absolute certainty that all the prophecies relating to His Second Advent will also be fulfilled one hundred per cent.

The most alarming and saddening fact about His Second Advent is that it will be preceded by a great falling away (2 Thessalonians 2:3). This was foretold by Paul more than two thousand years ago. One would have expected the very opposite to be more feasible and that His followers would grow in grace and greater wisdom, especially when seen in the light of the great joy that awaits those who believe in Him and are expectantly waiting for His return at the Rapture. Sadly, this is not the case. The Emergent Church rejects the Rapture and are instead on a contemplative journey to establish the Kingdom of God on earth here and now Wow! No wonder Paul wrote:

Claiming to be wise, they became fools [professing to be smart, they made simpletons of themselves]. (Romans 1:22; Amplified Bible)

Ironically, the paraphrase of Romans 1:22 in “The Message” by Eugene Peterson (one of Stephan Joubert’s and the Mosaïek pastors’ heroes) describes exactly what they are doing on their emergent journey.

What happened was this: People knew God perfectly well but when they didn’t treat him like God, refusing to worship him, they trivialized themselves in stillness and confusion so that there was neither sense nor direction left in their lives.

Isn’t that uncanny? Although it was not Eugene’s Peterson’s intention, him being an emergent himself, to categorize the Emergent Church’s journey with his paraphrase of Romans 1:22, he did so unwittingly. Allow me to paraphrase Peterson’s paraphrase of Romans 1:22.

What happened is this: The Emergent Church knows perfectly well who God is but they don’t treat Him like God, refusing to worship Him the way He commanded them to worship Him in his Word (John 4:24; Hebrews 10:19-23). Instead they have trivialized themselves with practices like silence and stillness in their so-called contemplative prayers, believing that it (the stillness/silence) is the first language of God and that it brings them into the presence of God. This led to confusion known as the cloud of unknowing where nothing is certain any longer. Not even the propositional truths in God’s Word are relevant in our societies. (Stephan Joubert attests to this in his now famous declaration: “We need to stand up for the truth.” People like saying that. However, “standing up” is equal to religious protest for some. It is to unmercifully [and tactlessly] tackle sin and injustice. Does that help? No! I would be able to quote a couple of studies that show how those “standing up for the truth” efforts of religious people have no real healing effect on society. It only serves to highlight the boundaries between “us” and “them.” It makes religious folks come across more judgmental than ever. But it does not embody Jesus’ words that we need to let our light shine before people in order for them to see our GOOD WORKS and glorify our heavenly Father [Matthew 5:16]). Their confusion has navigated them onto a journey that neither has sense nor direction. It leads to a futuristic kingdom of great imaginations and wishful thinking.

When speaking of the RAPTURE we are immediately touching on a topic that seems to be one of the most potent reasons for the falling away. More and more Christians who see themselves as biblically sound evangelicals are shunning the doctrine of the Rapture as mere escapism and opting instead for the notion that the Christian Church should take hands with other religions to make the world a better place or, as the EC fraternity refer to it, to bring in and to expand the Kingdom of God on earth. Rick Warren, as you know, was one of the most important personalities who spearheaded the GLOBAL PEACE PLAN which gave the quest for common ground between religions a huge lift-off on its palatability launching pad. Palatability is the key word to the successful inauguration of the Kingdom of God on earth, so they say. However, the great tragedy in the quest for common ground amongst all the religions is that the Christians are making all the major compromises while all the other religions refuse point-blank to betray their own doctrines. Nonetheless, the question we need to ask ourselves is whether those who are falling into the fathomless chasm of apostasy are Christians in the biblical sense of the word or are they unbelievers who are masquerading as disciples of Jesus Christ? (2 Corinthians 11:13, 14). I tend to believe that they are not genuine Christians and I say this on account of Paul’s words in 2 Corinthians 7:10:

For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death. (Emphasis added).

A person who is truly born from above will never regret his or her salvation. They will never be dissatisfied with God’s propositional truths in his Word and venture to rethink and adapt it to suit the whims of men and their corrupt cultures. They refuse to walk in the old paths (Jeremiah 6:16) and have instead opted for new paths that are leading them to destruction.

One of Gautama Buddha’s famous sayings on his path or journey was: “It is better to travel than to arrive.” A well-known offshoot of this is the maxim: “Life is a journey, not a destination” or “It’s the journey, not the destination.” It reminds me of the hit song, Caravans, some time ago with the nostalgic chorus lyrics: “I don’t know where I’m going but I’m going.” It conjures up a picture of a group of desert nomads on a bunch of thirsty camels (a caravan, as it is known) on their way to nowhere. Can you imagine Moses singing the words “We don’t know where we’re going but we’re going” to the Israelites in the wilderness? You rarely find Emergent Church pastors preaching on heaven and hell as final destinations. Their main objective is to remind their audiences of the life they need to live here and now, this side of the grave. One may safely say that their sermons always lean heavily toward a Kingdom Now Theology than a Final Destination Theology. A good example is a sermon Stephan Joubert delivered at the Mosaïek Church in Fairlands, Johannesburg on Sunday, 10 July this year. His sermon formed part of a series called “Our questions about . . .” in which several other preachers, amongst them Ron Martoia, Trevor Hudson, Manie Botha and Johan Geyser tackled topics such as “Our questions about  the Bible;”  “. . . about sin;”  “. . . about heaven and hell;”  “. . . about church” etc. In Stephan Joubert’s sermon on questions about heaven and hell it is evident from the very outset that he had no intention to present his audience with a biblical exegesis of heaven and hell. Instead, he used his sermon to defend Rob Bell’s highly controversial book “Love Wins” and guess what? . . . he begins his sermon by saying that Bell’s book “has more to do with life on this side than with life on the other side.”

The conversation about heaven and hell gained momentum a couple of months ago, especially in the USA, when the well-known preacher, writer and video maker,  . . ., Rob Bell, wrote a book entitled “Love Wins.” The book wasn’t even published yet when the fat was already in the fire and sparked a conversation about whether he was a universalist, meaning that he believes in the salvation of all mankind after death. Now, interestingly enough, I think when I read the book, it has more to do with life on this side than with life on the other side. But it is evident that in America and perhaps also in South Africa peoples’ correct way of thinking is measured by what they believe about the other side and not so much about how they live and how they follow God on this side. [May I remind Stephan Joubert that Jesus, whom he claims to follow, placed an exceptionally high priority on the other side, i.e. His personal abode in heaven. Not only did He die on a cursed tree to make it possible for all mankind to escape the jaws of hell and to be with Him in heaven for all eternity; He also expressed a profound desire for all his true followers to be with Him in heaven when He said: "Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father's house are many mansions. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also. (John 14:1-3). It is His heart’s desire that His true disciples be with Him where He is. Indeed, His entire mission in heaven at the right hand of God is to prepare a place for His true followers in heaven].

It is not my intention to evaluate Stephan Joubert’s sermon in the light of Scripture in this commentary. My main objective is to to deliver an in depth critique on the Mosaïek Church’s Conversations held on their premises last year in September. The reason I used a snippet from Stephan Joubert’s sermon is to show you to what extent Gautama Buddha’s maxim “It is better to travel than to arrive” has influenced the Emergent Church’s Kingdom Now philosophy. Furthermore, I used the snippet to prove to you that Stephan Joubert’s assumption that Rob Bell’s book “Love Wins” revolves mainly around this life and the way you live it, is totally wrong. In fact Rob Bell’s own introduction in the preface to his book, proves that Stephan Joubert has misread and misunderstood his book. Listen to this.

Bell’s book leaves its readers with the impression that Jesus came to this world to just love everyone, regardless of what they have done and what they are doing. Notice that Bell only quotes the first part of John 3:16 “For God so loved the world . . .” and conveniently omits the rest of the passage “so that everyone who believes on Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” Jesus said that He came to this world to seek and to save the lost (Luke 19:10). If everyone eventually makes it to heaven because God just simply loves everyone, then His cross saves every person automatically without them having to believe in Him. Bell’s rendition of John 3:16 would then have to read as follows: “For God so loved the world that everyone may go to heaven.” Calvinists see the the cross of Christ in a similar way, i.e. that His cross saves the elect automatically without them having to believe prior to their regeneration. If the cross of Christ did not save all the elect automatically his death would have been a failure, so they say.

In Bell’s rendition of John 3:16 there is no mention of unbelievers perishing in hell because of their rejection of the cross (1 Corinthians 1:18), simply because they get a second chance after death. God loves the world; yes that is true, but his love has purpose in it and that purpose is to save the lost who are on their way to hell. Those who reject his love and refuse to return his love with obedient and love cannot benefit from his saving love, not because He wants them to perish but because they have themselves chosen to bear the brunt of his righteous judgements. It is not a case of not wanting all sinners to be saved but one of sinners being unable to go to heaven because they prefer to live and die in their sins. Jesus said:

“. . .  I go my way, and ye shall seek me, and shall die in your sins: whither I go, ye cannot come. Then said the Jews, Will he kill himself? because he saith, Whither I go, ye cannot come. And he said unto them, Ye are from beneath; I am from above: ye are of this world; I am not of this world. I said therefore unto you, that ye shall die in your sins: for if ye believe not that I am he, ye shall die in your sins. (John 8:21-24)

Mosaïek Conversations: Session 1 “The movements of the Journey” – Johan Geyser

Let us now open the curtain on the first scene or session, written and choreographed by Johan Geyser. He calls it “The Movements of the Journey.” Guess what were the very first words that came from his mouth? Yep! you’ve guessed it! His first words were “Our life is a journey.” That’s it! Nothing more and nothing less. He may as well have said: “We don’t know where we’re going. That’s not so important. The thing that matters most is that we are on a journey.” Please note that Johan Geyser hardly or ever used the Bible as the only authoritative map for this journey but rather used Martin Buber’s drivel to describe their journey. Who was Martin Buber? In his book “Faith Undone” Roger oakland says of Buber:

Buber’s mysticism led him to believe that God is in all things and all things are God, that all paths lead to God because ultimately all is God.  . . . mysticism is not just attracting the emerging church-it is the emerging church.

In Buber’s book Ecstatic Confessions: The Heart of Mysticism, he states:

There is no God apart from the world, nor a world apart from God . . . In the highest mystical ecstasy the Ego experiences that it has become God . . . Why not?  . . . there ceases to be a difference between the world and myself. “That I become God.” Why not?

At the core of this journey, as Martin Buber coined it, is our on-going relational interaction with God, with others in our immediate community and with the world at large. According to Buber it can either be an “I-Thou” relationship or an “I-It” relationship. The “I-Thou” relationship is the ideal one because in it the “I” and the “Thou” are intrinsically interwoven and unified. Contrastingly the “I-It” relationship is an undesirable one because it is built on detachment and separation. If, as Johan Geyser said, relationships are the only things that last forever and the only things we can take with us, it is obvious that we should hanker for an “I-Thou” relationship rather than an “I-It” one. In fact, according to Buber, the “I-Thou” relationship, in which God is the eternal “Thou,” the relation between the individual (the “I”) and God (the eternal “Thou”) is a universal relation and foundational for all other relations. A genuine “I-Thou” relation with God fosters a real “I-Thou” or “I-You” relationship with the world, the result being a philosophy of personal and transpersonal dialogue or conversations as a means to define personal responsibilities and to lay the foundation for ethical inquiry (a quest for the truth). In layman’s terms this simply means that propositional truths like those we find in the Bible tend to create “I-It” relationships of detachment and separation whereas an “I-Thou” relationship enhances open dialogue and unity, as well as motivates the journeyers to find new compromised “truths.” That’s why the charlatan, Theo Geyser who is the brother of the other emergent charlatan, Johan Geyser, could say:

We’re actually in a desperate need, in the biblical narrative, to sort of get an inclusive thing. We need a virgin birth that gets everyone together and not divide us. (What does God think of us?- Broadcast on SABC2 on April 17, 2011)

I’ve heard about many fools who’ve tried to change the meaning of the many supernatural things (miracles) God has wrought throughout the ages, but never, never have I heard of a fool who would venture to change the virgin birth of Christ in such a way that it unites everyone into one big brotherhood of fools. Is it possible? Is it possible to change something that occurred more than two thousand years ago? Yes! the fraternal mystics in the Emergent Church would say. “We only need to sit quietly at the feet of our ‘Love Wins’ guru, Rob Bell, to learn how it is done.” And how does the “Love Wins” guru change the virgin birth of Christ into a paradigm shattering and unifying miracle? Listen to his Nooma video #15 and pay careful attention to his not so very subtle demotion of Christ’s virgin birth, death, resurrection and ascension. He says:

And so in the first century to claim that your god had risen from the dead and ascended into heaven just wasn’t that unique. The claims of these first Christians weren’t anything new.

If the first century Christians’ claims with regard to Christ’s virgin birth, death, resurrection and ascension weren’t that unique, what then did they regard as supremely unique in Christendom? Ah! the miracle to make this world a better place through service in stead of political or dictatorial coercion, as the Romans did — that is what makes Christ so unique. Theo Geyser’s plea that we should concoct a virgin birth that unites everything and everyone is already a fait accompli. How was it done? It was done by their big pal, Rob Bell, who unashamedly demoted Christ’s miraculous virgin birth to the infamous lie that all the other so-called gods (such as Mithra and Attis) allegedly also had a virgin birth. Now you can see why the emergents have placed such an high priority on relationships (an “I-Thou” relationship and not an “I-it” one) instead of on a biblical narrative of the virgin birth.

Buber believed that an “I-Thou” relationship with God can be experienced through silence and that anyone can have an “I-Thou” relationship with God through “I-Thou” moments with people, nature, art and the world. Frankly, this is a flagrant negation and rejection of God’s mediatorial work on the cross in order to remove the sin-barrier that caused the break in the original relationship between God and man. Johan Geyser does not deny this but says that it was primarily the disturbance of the relationship between God and man that introduced death into the earth and not the breaking of a command based on “Don’t do that . . . don’t do this.” Death entered. Yes, that is true, but Johan Geyser failed dismally to explain to his audience that life, God’s life in a person, can be restored through repentance and faith toward Him and His Gospel. Instead, as we shall see as we go along, his main concern was not to present the Gospel but a mystical path or journey to enhance a relationship that supposedly already exists between all men and God through a divine spark that allegedly resides in all men. All that needs to be done is to change relationships from an “I-It” relation to an “I-Thou” relation through dialogue and a true sense of interconnectedness and unity. Johan Geyser admits to the break in this relationship between God and man but brazenly denies that it was a breach of God’s command not to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. This is what he said:

It is clear from the very outset that Johan Geyser tried his level best to convince his audience that his point of departure was that of a Christian and to do so he said: “We think of our life as a journey with God. It’s with God!” The question is: Which God or God who? In fact, as already indicated, he does not open the conversation with God and the propositional truths in His Word, but with Martin Buber. Now, why would he do a thing like that? The answer is simple. It is to draw the alleged parallel lines between the Christian faith and Buddhism.

In his article, “Martin Buber and Asia” by Maurice Friedman (Philosophy East and West, 1976, Volume: 26, Pages: 411, SSN: 00318221) the author shows Buber’s “I-Thou” dialogue with Taoism, Hinduism and Buddhism and how these on-journey encounters influenced the progression of his philosophy of “I-Thou” and I-It” relationships. Although Hinduism and Buddhism played an important part in the early development of his philosophical thinking, it was Taoism, Jewish Hasidism and Zen that continued to influence his later thought. Of these it was Taoism in particular, especially Wu Wei, (action of the whole being) that remained central to the “I-Thou” relationship. Wikipedia defines Wu Wei as follows:

The literal meaning of Wu Wei is “without action”, “without effort”, or “without control”, and is often included in the paradox wei wu wei: “action without action” or “effortless doing”. The practice of wu wei and the efficacy of wei wu wei are fundamental tenets in Chinese thought and have been mostly emphasized by the Taoist school. The aim of wu wei is to achieve a state of perfect equilibrium, or alignment with the Tao, and, as a result, obtain an irresistible form of “soft and invisible” power.

There is another less commonly referenced sense of wu wei; “action that does not involve struggle or excessive effort”. In this instance, Wu means “without” and Wei means “effort”. The concept of “effortless action” is a part of Taoist Internal martial arts such as T’ai chi ch’uan, Baguazhang and Xing Yi. It follows that Wu wei complies with the main feature and distinguishing characteristic of Taoism, that of being natural. To apply wu wei to any situation is to take natural action.

Here’s a question for you: How do you get Jesus to do the Taoist Wu-Wei whole being movements toward His Father, His circle of disciples and the world at large? Well, first of all you need to foster an “I-It” relationship with the Holy Bible, meaning of course that you must learn how to detach and separate yourself from the real meaning of the content and context of biblical passages the Holy Spirit intended to convey to its readers. Or at least, you must know how to rethink, rehash and repaint (aka Rob Bell) the eternal truths in the Bible. This is very important if you wish to develop a balanced and integrated Wu-Wei whole being movement toward God (not to find out what His will is but to be in His presence in a mystical “cloud-of-unknowing” sort of being of solitude and silence), toward your own inner circle (a communal whole movement being) and toward the world at large (a ministerial whole movement being, not to present lost sinners with God’s Gospel of salvation and sanctification but to dole out glasses of cold water because every single person already has a divine spark in his/her innermost being. Your ministry, therefore, is to teach the adherents to a vast diversity of religions [Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Witch Doctors etc.] that Jesus of Nazareth is already present in their innermost beings and that they only need to realize and become aware of it through mystical practices. Ask Johan Geyser’s twin brother, Theo, and Dries Cronje of e-church fame. They know it for a fact [Read here and here]).

As I already mentioned, it is of the utmost importance to foster an “I-It” relationship with Bible truths, simply because the Wu-Wei-whole-being-movements are entirely incompatible with patronizing, condescending and outrageous statements such as the following: “Do you think that I have come to give peace (unity) on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division (disunity) (Luke 12:51). Jesus must have said this when He was totally out of sync with the Taoist Wu-Wei whole being movement philosophy. But then again, we should realize that He too often moved from an “I-Thou” relationship to an “I-It” relationship. He was never consistent in his relationship with people. Luke 12:51 was one of his major “I-It” Wu-Wei movements. You cannot possibly do the Wu-Wei whole being dance with God, your community and the world at large when you have an “I-Thou” relationship with truths such as this. Nevertheless, let’s again listen to Johan Geyser’s incomparable WWW (Wu-Wei Wisdom).

Johan Geyser delivers his piéce de resistence about 20 minutes into his presentation. The ultimate purpose of the whole  being movement toward God, your community and the world at large is to weave them into one unified integrated dimension of being. The ideal is to disallow any one of the dimensions to dominate the others. When this happens, that is when the fusion is complete, a fourth dimension suddenly emerges in your life. Suddenly your life is no longer limited to a three dimensional movement of being when you become aware that God is in everything, that He is everywhere and that He is at work everywhere.

Here we see that the movements of the journey are based on experience rather than pre-set dogmas or doctrines. The most disconcerting thing about Johan Geyser’s presentation is that he audaciously refers to Scripture to prove that Paul’s concern with the Church at Corinth was not so much about doctrine as it was with their consciousness (awareness) that their bodies were temples of God. Simply said, it was not God’s doctrine (propositional truth) that revealed to them that their bodies were temples of God but their own awareness, sparked by their whole being movements, which made them conscious of their bodies being temples of God. In other words, they had to experience the fourth dimension on this journey of movements toward God, the community and the world at large before they were able to know (become aware or conscious) that God is in everything and that everything is in God (panentheism par excellence). So the next time you want to persuade peoples’ of other religious persuasions that their bodies are already temples of God, don’t try to do that by quoting to them from the Bible (it only fosters an “I-It” relationship) but rather by making them aware of it through their whole being movements on their journey.

You will recall that Johan Geyser said at the beginning of his presentation that Adam and Eve’s fall and subsequent spiritual death was not the result of a command “don’t do this . . . don’t do that” but primarily through a break or malfunction in their relationship with God, themselves and the world. Simply put, they developed or created for themselves a dysfunctional reality, a reality governed by disunity, separation, division and disharmony. He then ultimately comes to the conclusion that it was not the Corinthians’ misunderstanding of a doctrine or dogma that kept them form knowing that their bodies were temples of God but a lack in their awareness or consciousness. The only means to rectify this was to awaken their consciousness (make them aware) to the fact that their bodies were the temples of God. How did Paul do it? He did not remind them of what God’s Law said in regard to fornication, according to Johan Geyser, but ventured to make them aware of the fact that their bodies were temples of God. The key to this, therefore, is not biblical doctrine but an awakening of consciousness through mystical practices.

This brings us to the ministering part of the whole movement being toward the world at large. It is evident that the EC’s ministry to the world has absolutely nothing to do with Christ’s command to make disciples of all the nations and to teach them to observe everything He has commanded us. A command equals a law and law demands observance and the act of teaching is all about telling people what to do and not to do. All these things wreak of control; it is too patronizing and condescending and divides mankind into us and them, holy and unholy, saved and unsaved. So let’s just get rid of the Law and teach people how to develop and exercise their awareness. What you must do, is make your fellowmen in the world aware of their own reality and to teach them how to live in that reality. I found the following on a Hindu site called Light Net Group, describing the purpose of cosmic awareness.

The awareness indicates it is all up to the observer as to what is important to him. The awareness indicates that the purpose of the awareness is to help entities become aware of those things that are happening in their realm of reality, in their world.

And in becoming aware, to become aware what is happening to them, the purpose of this awareness is also to help them to better understand their own place in the world of reality in which they reside, and what they themselves need to don in order to be ready for what is the reality they witness.

Eckhart Tolle’s interpretation of this “reality” is the “now” or “present moment” and how to live in it.

Now we can understand why the Emergent Church is more concerned about the journey and the movements of the journey than with the destination (which in essence is a Buddhist concept)? The destination is something that lies in the future and we have no control over the future. We may have no control over the future but God does and for us to live and be conscious only of the “now” without contemplating the future in the light of God’s word and his prophecies and not to be ready and prepared for it is not only foolish but downright dangerous. And speaking of prophecy: one of the most important prophecies in the Bible concerns the one about God’s future Kingdom on earth. This too, according to the Emergent Church, must be brought into the “now” and the way to do it is to panenthiastically universalize God’s presence (God is in all and all is in God). If God is in everything and everyone then His Kingdom is also already in everyone “here and now” and the way to experience it is NOT through the adherence and obedience to any kind or form of doctrine but through an “I-Thou” relationship with God and others. “Awareness” finds its strongest niche in experience and the latter in your own personal story or journey. So Eckhart Tolle’s advice is not to quote the Buddha, or to hope to achieve Buddha-like enlightenment at some point in the future, but to just be the Buddha, right here, right now. Similarly we are not supposed to quote and teach biblical doctrines but merely to be aware that Jesus Christ is already in everyone which makes any pointing to the future redundant. We don’t have to look to the future simply because we are already living and moving in God’s kingdom here and now. And that, my dear friends, is why the Mosaïek Church in Fairlands, Johannesburg cannot be called a Christian Church but is in fact a Buddhist retreat.

As we shall see later, especially in my critique on David Benner’s presentation “Contemplation and Transformation” the awareness of the “now” facilitates the awareness of the “I am” or “I amness” of the individual.

So, what’s to be done? Johan Geyser provides the answer when he says:

That’s precisely why his brother, Theo Geyser, could say with foolish boldness:

I was wondering. Is this the best way to engage a culture, to burn somebody’s religion and to send somebody to a burning stake, by condemning them and to get them on your side and sing a hallelujah chorus.  What if the approach need (sic) to be like Jesus, to be more interested in the person than in the method or the expression of their faith? What if this can be one of the biggest opportunities to broaden your horizon, to meet God and to be changed and be changed yourself in that circumstance? I’m wondering and I think maybe that is the way we need to go if we have a conviction that we can’t take Jesus to anybody but that he’s already present in somebody’s life. Maybe a sangoma can be an opportunity to meet Jesus. (What does God think of us?– Broadcast on SABC2 on April 24, 2011)

When Stephen delivered his ear and heart piercing sermon in Acts 7 the Jews blocked their ears, gnashed their teeth, attacked him like a pack of wolves and stoned him to death. In our advanced technological age the religious hierarchies (such as the Emergent and Calvinist fraternity) no longer block their ears. They block you from their heavenly websites and blogs.. Above is a JPEG snippet of a video uploaded by a guy who calls himself KeithTruth. Now that’s a good pseudonym for a person who rejects biblical truth. How dare I suggest such an unloving thing? Well, decide for yourself when you read the rest of my comment.

Like any decent and respectable person whose freedom and free-will is honourably respected on YouTube I exercised my “internet constitutional” right and commented on a video that was uploaded by a guy who calls himself KeithTruth. He responded to my comment but when I wrote something in response to his response the following message in red appeared on my screen “You have been blocked by the owner of this video.” It reminded me of the days in Nazi Germany when freedom loving people were incarcerated and even killed when they criticized Hitler . . .  or was it in the time of Calvin? Anyway, whether Hitler or Calvin, both of them had their opponents murdered whenever they were criticized. It also reminded me of my humiliating experience I had with a “Christian” forum called Bible Database that often dumped me in their cooler because I did not agree with their Calvinist buddies. By the way, they took much pleasure in writing about the pleasures of drinking beer and even quoted the 33rd degree Freemason, Benjamin Franklin, who said: “Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.” Guess what? They were never sent to the cooler.

As you can see from my comment above I merely echoed what John MacArthur has said in the past so many times. He believes that Jesus loves everyone but did not die on the cross for everyone. KeithTruth makes no bones about the fact that he is in total agreement with John MacArthur when he says “And if Jesus died for everyone and substituted himself taking their sins then everyone would have their sins paid for and universalism would be true.” This is the kind of nonsense you get when you believe that Jesus’ death on the cross automatically saves the elect only without them having to put your faith in Him and his finished work on the cross prior to their regeneration and IN ORDER to be saved. In fact this kind of nonsense completely rules out and nullifies crucial biblical truths such as 1 Corinthians 1:18: “For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God.”

Unbelieving reprobates (as Calvinists refer to them) no longer need to pooh-pooh the cross as sheer foolishness in order to earn their eternal damnation. Why would they want to do that when the cross and Jesus’ atoning work were never intended for them in the first place? Is the cross to them foolishness because they are reprobates and consequently and ultimately perish or do they perish because the cross is to them foolishness? Some of you may ask: So what’s the difference? The difference is this: In the first instance God is the one who sovereignly reprobates the non-elect causing them to pooh-pooh Jesus Christ’s cross as foolishness. They regard the cross as foolishness because of what they are – irretrievably damned and lost reprobates. In the second instance foolhardy unbelievers reprobate themselves because they willingly and deliberately pooh-pooh the cross of God’s only begotten Son, Jesus Christ. They forfeit their salvation because of their refusal to believe in the redemptive power of the cross of Jesus Christ. Of course, Calvinists must of necessity opt for the first instance because they believe that God has predestined and reprobated the non-elect long before the foundation of the world. Jesus said the following about the mission of his Holy Spirit: “

Nevertheless I tell you the truth; It is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send him unto you. And when he is come, he will reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment: Of sin, because they believe not on me; (John 16:7-9).

The sin that damns men, women and children to hell is unbelief and not because they were not predestined unto salvation before the foundation of the world. The cross to them is sheer foolishness. But how can the reprobate believe on Him and his atoning work on the cross when He did not die for them? That’s impossible. How can the Holy Spirit convict the reprobate of their sin of unbelief when Christ did not die for them? Once again, that’s impossible. Imagine the Holy Spirit convicting the reprobate by saying to them: “You are hopelessly lost because of your sin of unbelief but don’t let that bother you because even if you were able to believe it would not have benefited you in anyway because Jesus Christ did not die for you on the cross.”

Jesus Christ’s sacrifice on the cross, according to the Levitical sacrificial system in the OT, was first and foremost a sin-offering. The question we should ask is whether the Levitical sin-offering in the OT was sacrificed for the sins of the entire nation of Israel or just for a few chosen ones? If the sin-offering was not intended for a select few only but for the entire nation of Israel it would be expedient to agree with KeithTruth that  a kind of national universalism would have to be true. Allow me to change his quoted statement above slightly and apply it to the sin-offering of the Old Testament: ““And if the sin-offering was for the entire nation of Israel and a substitution for everyone’s sins everyone would have their sins paid for and universalism (for Israel) would have been true.”  Was the sin-offering a sacrifice for the entire nation of Israel or only a select few? Bear in mind that the entire nation of Israel was God’s chosen people and as such the sin-offering was indeed for the entire nation. Was every single Israelite saved, regardless of the fact that he/she was an elect?

On the annual Day of atonement, the High Priest had to slaughter an animal and apply its blood to himself for the atonement of his own sins, and only then was he allowed to offer sacrifices for the entire nation and to enter the most holy of holies in the tabernacle where he applied it’s blood on the mercy seat for the entire nation of Israel . Was Jesus Christ’s offering of his own blood which was a more excellent sacrifice than the sin-offering in Leviticus, not efficacious to make atonement for the entire human race whilst the shadow thereof (the sin-offering in the OT) had sufficient efficacy to make atonement for the entire nation of Israel? If Jesus Christ’s sacrifice was the anti-type of the offerings in Leviticus which had the efficacy to make atonement for the entire nation of Israel, then Christ’s sacrifice most certainly had the efficacy to make atonement for the entire human race. But why are most people for whom Christ made atonement on the cross not saved? – for the same reason why most of the Israelites were not allowed to enter the Promised Land.

Let us therefore fear, lest, a promise being left us of entering into his rest, any of you should seem to come short of it. For unto us was the gospel preached, as well as unto them: but the word preached did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in them that heard it. For we which have believed do enter into rest, as he said, As I have sworn in my wrath, if they shall enter into my rest: although the works were finished from the foundation of the world. (Hebrews 4:1-3).

God had already established a rest as far back as creation itself but most of the Israelites forfeited it because of their unbelief. Faith in God and his promises was therefore a prerequisite to enjoy God’s rest which He established from the foundation of the earth and NOT because most of them were predestined unto damnation before the foundation of the world.

John MacArthur also believes that it is your on-going performance (commonly known in Calvinism as “Perseverance of the Saints” which constitutes the “P” in the acronym TULIP) that determines the genuineness of your salvation.

If God loves only the elect to the extent that He had his only begotten Son crucified on a cross for them only, it is obvious that ONLY the elect cannot possibly lose their salvation and shall endure, continue and persevere in the faith to the very end of their lives here on earth. Neither can the reprobate for whom Christ did not die, according to John MacArthur, lose their damnation simply because God has predestined them unto eternal damnation even before the foundation of the earth and ARE therefore irretrievably lost. No salvation equals no life changing experience and leads to eternal damnation.

To put it in a nutshell: The elect cannot possibly lose their salvation and so too the non-elect cannot possibly lose or forfeit their damnation. Having made this distinction between the elect and the non-elect perfectly clear once again, it also becomes perfectly clear that John MacArthur’s statement “Those who change are saved, those who don’t are damned” is one of the most insidious oxymorons imaginable. Of whom is he speaking – the elect or the non elect?

If MacArthur, in his his entire statement “Those who change are saved, those who don’t are damned,” refers to the elect it would mean that they are prone to either a life of change or no change which means they can either retain or lose their salvation. Can the elect lose their salvation? Absolutely not! If that were possible, the doctrine of predestination unto salvation before the foundation of the earth would have been good only for the garbage dump and God’s glory and honour would have been dealt a deathblow. IMPOSSIBLE! The only conclusion we can draw from this is that the entire statement “Those who change are saved, those who don’t are damned” cannot possibly be applied to the elect. Not even the staunchest Calvinist is able to say “The elect who change are saved” because such a statement implies an opposite which is “The elect who do not change are damned.” IMPOSSIBLE? IMPOSSIBLE!

If the elect are unreservedly and unconditionally saved, which is essential for God’s glory, then it is essentially true that the statement “The elect who change are saved” is completely superfluous. What is the sense in declaring that “the elect who change are saved” when every single elect person shall be changed because they have been predestined unto salvation before the foundation of the earth? If MacArthur’s statement ““Those who change are saved, those who don’t are damned” could be applied to the elect, the clause in Chapter 3 “Of God’s Eternal Decree” i.e. “God from all eternity, did, by the most wise and holy counsel of His own will, freely, and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass;” would have to be erased from the Westminster Confession of Faith for all eternity. If God unchangeably ordained the salvation of every elect person before the foundation of the world, it is fruitless to argue that they are prone or susceptible to no change in their lives. In other word: THEY MUST CHANGE AND THEY WILL CHANGE whether they like it or not. Ah, but if they don’t change it is the clearest sign and proof that the “elect” are not truly the elect. They are the reprobate when no change is evident in their lives. This brings us to the next part of John Mac Arthur’s Calvinistic oxymoron.

Can MacArthur’s entire statement “Those who change are saved, those who don’t are damned” be applied to the non-elect or the reprobate? The possibility of change in a reprobate’s life is zero, zilch, nada which of course leaves them prone or susceptible to one thing only and that is a life of unchangeable corruption, total depravity, debauchery,  extreme sinfulness and filth. Once again, it is necessary to use the word IMPOSSIBLE when we examine John MacArtrhur’s entire statement “Those who change are saved, those who don’t are damned” in the light of the reprobate. If it were possible to apply the first part of MacArthur’s statement “Those who change are saved” to the reprobate it would mean that they too can be saved. Is that possible? Of course not because they have been chosen of God before the foundation of the earth to be dammed eternally. They have no hope of ever being changed because if there had been the slightest possibility for them to change they would have instantly been changed into the elect because ONLY the elect are saved and changed. Can the second part of his statement be applied to the reprobate? Indeed, it is the only part of his statement that can be applied to the reprobate, just as much as the first part of his statement can only be applied to the elect.

If John MacArthur’s entire statement “Those who change are saved, those who don’t are damned” cannot be applied neither to the elect nor to the reprobate, what’s the point in making such a statement? It means nothing. At best he could say “The elect are changed because they are irretrievably and irrevocably saved” or “The elect are saved because they are irretrievably and irrevocably changeable” and “The reprobate are not changed because they are irretrievably and irrevocably lost” or “The reprobate are lost because they are irretrievably and irrevocably unchangeable.” Calvinism is a strange doctrine; very strange and weird indeed. Not even a great Calvinist like John MacArthur knows how to articulate “Those who change are saved, those who don’t are damned” in terms of the elect and the reprobate. Simply said: he can’t because it does not apply to either one.

If Jesus Christ did not die on the cross for all people then some of them (the reprobate) cannot possibly be saved and changed. Now you tell me with all honesty: Can we apply John MacArthur’s entire statement “Those who change are saved, those who don’t are damned,” to the reprobate? If Jesus Christ died only for the elect and they are all saved and changed because if they hadn’t been saved and changed Jesus would have been a failure, can we apply John MacArthur’s entire statement “Those who change are saved, those who don’t are damned” to the elect? Having proved to you that his statement cannot be applied to neither the one nor the other, we must of necessity ask ourselves: Of whom is John MacArthur speaking when he makes such a statement?

is definitely more radical. They have found ways and means to outdo, outsmart, outshine, exceed, surpass, outclass, and supersede Jesus of Nazareth’s radicalism. Yep, their mere online presence helps people all over the world to follow Jesus better and more radically everyday. In order to pinpoint echurch’s superlatively greater radicalism than that of Jesus of Nazareth, we first need to examine HIS radicalism whom they claim to follow. To do this we need to consult His Word, something echurch rarely or ever does. So here goes, and brace yourself while we examine Jesus of Nazareth’s radicalism.

QUESTION #1: WHAT IS MORE RADICAL THAN THE FOLLOWING STATEMENT?

If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. (Matthew 16:24)

ANSWER TO QUESTION #1

is definitely more radical. It boasts that through their example they can teach you how to follow Jesus better and more radically every single day.

Anyone who claims to have found ways to improve Jesus’ method of following Him, i.e. to deny oneself, to take up your cross and follow Him, is not only deceived but conceited. They assume they have found a better way to follow Him, a way that is radically different from His own. This new radical way is to serve others in a Mother Theresaian kind of way. Her Gospel, if you can call it that, involved the belief that Jesus is in everyone and therefore there was no need for her to present the Gospel of salvation to them. All that was necessary was to alleviate their suffering through service. She said:

“We never try to convert those who receive [aid from Missionaries of Charity] to Christianity but in our work we bear witness to the love of God’s presence and if Catholics, Protestants, Buddhists, or agnostics become for this better men — simply better — we will be satisfied. It matters to the individual what church he belongs to. If that individual thinks and believes that this is the only way to God for her or him, this is the way God comes into their life — his life. If he does not know any other way and if he has no doubt so that he does not need to search then this is his way to salvation.” (Life in the Spirit: Reflections, Meditations and Prayers,Pages 81-82)

. . . And this sounds so much like Brian McLaren, one of Stephan Joubert’s favourite Emerging Church leaders, who said:

I don’t hope all Buddhists will become (cultural) Christians, I do hope all who feel so called will become Buddhist followers of Jesus; I believe they should be given that opportunity and invitation. I don’t hope all Jews or Hindus will become members of the Christian religion. But I do hope all who feel so called will become Jewish or Hindu followers of Jesus. Ultimately, I hope that Jesus will save Buddhism, Islam, and every other religion, including the Christian religion, which often seems to need saving about as much as any other religion does.¹ (A Generous Orthodoxy, 264)

Now that’s radical for you – really and truly RADICAL! It supersedes Jesus of Nazareth’s radicalism by far.

What Brian McLaren, and of course his confidants like Stephan Joubert, are saying is that Buddhists, Hindus, Jews and for that matter any other person from whatever religious persuasion, have no need to obey Jesus Christ’s doctrines and teachings. Was this what Jesus taught his disciples when he commanded them to make disciples of all the nations? Listen to the real Jesus of the Bible who said:

Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:19-20).

Christians in name only, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, , Rosicrucians, Satanist, New Agers, Bahais, Muslims, Freemasons etc. are eventually going to follow the (Anti)Christ Jesus. This false Jesus is going to allow them to believe whatever (there’s that favourite word of Stephan Joubert again) they please, just as long as they follow him.

QUESTION #2: WHAT IS MORE RADICAL THAN THE FOLLOWING STATEMENT?

If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple. (Luke 14:26).

ANSWER TO QUESTION #2

is definitely more radical. It boasts that through their example they can teach you how to follow Jesus better and more radically every single day.

No, no, no, no Jesus, you’ve got it all wrong. Followers of Jesus Christ must at all costs foster good relationships with all people of all religions, even to the extent where you, like Brian McLaren, participate in their religious festivals such as Ramadan. McLaren says:

“Jesus seems to say, ‘The kingdom of God doesn’t need to wait until something else happens ^{(in reference to the Second Advent of Jesus Christ).} No, it is available and among you now . . . Invite people of all nations, races, classes, and religions to participate in this network of dynamic, interactive relationships with God and all God’s creation!” . . . the kingdom of God will be radically, scandalously inclusive. As we’ve seen, Jesus enjoys table fellowship with prostitutes and drunks . . . He affirms and responds to the faith of Gentiles.²

QUESTION #3: WHAT IS MORE RADICAL THAN THE FOLLOWING STATEMENT?

Who is my mother? and who are my brethren? And he stretched forth his hand toward his disciples, and said, Behold my mother and my brethren! For whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother. (Matthew 12:48-50)

ANSWER TO QUESTION #3

is definitely more radical. Stephan Joubert says: NO! “Remember every person you serve turns into an immediate friend of Jesus. Go one step further: see him or her as Jesus in disguise.” This is exactly what a Christian living in Pakistan was doing, serving others, when she was arrested by Muslims and thrown in jail because she claimed that Jesus died on the cross for our sins and is now seated at the right hand of God. She is awaiting her trial and could be executed for her heinous crime. Are those who arrested her and are now calling for her execution friends of Jesus? Are these haters of Jesus and his TRUE FOLLOWERS Jesus in disguise? Now remember, this is a highly educated Professor in theology who is disseminating such utter nonsense. Does Stephan Joubert know who the real Jesus of the Bible is? Apparently NOT! And he is supposed to be a leader who visits churches, in house Bible studies, Prayer breakfasts etc. to teach people how to follow Jesus? May God have mercy on those who listen to him and follow his wretched advice.

The people you serve become friends of Jesus regardless of their refusal to do the will of the Father in heaven? Everyone who does not do the will of God the Father in heaven is Jesus in disguise? Really? NO! says Jesus: My family circle includes those who do the will of my Father in heaven and radically excludes everyone who refuses to do His will. Whatever, as Stephan Joubert would say, they may not be doing the will of God the Father in heaven but they are better followers of Jesus and they are radically following Him everyday because through echurch’s online presence, they are learning to be better and more radical followers of Jesus everyday.

1) Brian McLaren, A Generous Orthodoxy, p. 264

2) Romans and Syrophonecians and Samaritans.” (Brian McLaren, The Secret Message of Jesus: Uncovering the Truth that could change everything (Nashville: Thomas Nelson’s W Publishing Group, 1006), page 74 & 94).

And that settles it? In reference to John 14:6 where Jesus says: “I am the way, the truth, and the life; no man cometh unto the Father, but by me” Bell explains this exclusive statement as follows:

This is as wide and expansive a claim that a person can make. What He doesn’t say, is how or when or in what manner the mechanism functions that gets people to God through Him. He doesn’t even state that those coming to the Father though Him will know they are coming exclusively through Him. He simply claims that whatever God is doing in the world to know and redeem and restore the world is happening through Him.

OK, so it does’nt matter what kind of idols or false gods you worship you WILL enter through Jesus whether you like it or not. What kind of awesome freedom of choice and free-will is that? Most people don’t even know they are entering through the only Door to God the Father. They merely stumble upon it and unknowingly enter through it. Jesus must have been delirious when He said that “you shall KNOW the truth (Jesus Himself) and the truth (Jesus Himself) will make you free” (John  8:32) and ” . . . this is life eternal, that they might KNOW thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.” (John 17:3) as opposed to one of his most ardent follower’s statements that those who come to the Father through Him don’t even have to KNOW the truth that He is indeed the way, the truth and the life. It sounds so much like the abominable doctrine of predestination and election where the elect don’t know they are the elect until they are drawn irresistibly through the Door and when they have entered they look back to see written over the top of the Door “BELOVED ELECT.” What has happened to Jesus Christ’s statement in Matthew 7:14?: ” . . . strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth to life, and few there be that find it.” You first need to find the Door before you can enter through it and to find it you must first seek it and to seek it you must first have an intense desire to seek it (Jeremiah 29:13). Those who have no desire to seek the only Door that leads to God the Father will never find it. In fact Jesus said that very few have the desire to find it and as a a consequence only few find it. Nonsense! says Rob Bell, everyone enters through the only Door to God the Father. Rob’s evangelizing outreaches to Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus, atheists, Satanists, Hare Krishnas etc. goes something like this:

Bell: Hi there, I’m Bell and I’m here to tell you Jesus loves you.

Unbeliever: Really! Jesus loves me? Who’s Jesus?  Never heard of him.

Bell: Never mind, your ignorance is actually your redemption cause He, being the Door that leads to his Father, automatically draws you to Him so that you may enter through Him. You see, his redemptive power actually works like a vacuum cleaner. You are sucked in whether you like it or not.

Unbeliever: Wow, that’s really cool but I don’t want to enter through Jesus. I have my own door that leads to Nirvana. Surely I have the right of choice to enter through whatever door I want.

Bell: Yes of course you have the awesome choice to do as you please, but Jesus’ choice to draw you through Him to His Father overrules your choices completely.

Unbeliever: Really? You mean to tell me that He forces me through him to his father . . . and . . . and . . . you call that love? You must be kidding.

Bell: Whatever! (with due respect to Stephan Joubert who just loves the expression “whatever”) I will see you in heaven whether you like it or not.

Unbeliever: Yea, yea, whatever! (once again with due respect to Stephan Joubert who just adores the expression “whatever”).

Whoopee!  This sounds so much like Paul who received the Gospel directly from Jesus Christ:-

For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God. (1 Corinthians 1:18)

Rob Bell says it is absolutely, unequivocally, unalterably not true that the cross of Christ is to Buddhists, Muslims, atheists, agnostics, New Agers, Satanists, etc. etc. an instrument of foolishness and therefore they will never perish. In fact, no one needs to understand or realize that the cross is God’s only power to save lost sinners. The cross, according to Bell, saves everyone automatically without them having to embrace it as God’s only means to salvation. Even those who regard the preaching of his cross to be sheer foolishness will be with Him in heaven one day. He is saving everybody regardless of their hatred of Him, their rejection of Him and his cross and regardless of their choice to die in their sins? Jesus said:

“I go my way, and ye shall seek me, and shall die in your sins: whither I go, ye cannot come” and “ye shall die in your sins: for if ye believe not that I am he, ye shall die in your sins.” (John 8:21, 24)

Jesus said you CANNOT come whither He goes IF you die in your sins. It is impossible. Nonsense, saith Rob Bell the man who has put out the fires of hell, He is saving everybody regardless of the fact that they are dying in their sins.

These are the statements of a man who claims not to be a universalist? His convictions don’t seem to hold true to everything he wrote in his book. So what does Rob Bell mean when he says he believes in a literal hell? In the audio version of his book Love Wins, chapter 3, he goes to great pains to explain away the traditional Christian view of hell. His book is literally littered with many questions, because that is allegedly one of the ways to follow Jesus who consistently asked many rhetorical questions, and some of Bell’s most pertinent questions relate to the existence of a literal hell.

Rob Bell had a bad experience with the traditional Christian view of hell when he spoke at a meeting in San Francisco and was confronted by a group of protestors. One of the guys had a jacket on with the words “Turn or Burn” stitched to the back. Although I personally wouldn’t use this hellish maxim as an introduction to my presentations of the Gospel we dare not overlook the warnings in Scripture. Apart from the fact that “the “turn or burn” evangelical tool reeks of coercion, enforcement and strong-arming, it is by far not an adequate description of hell. Was Jesus engulfed by physical flames when He suffered the pangs of hell on the cross? Perish the thought! The most dreaded thing for Him, which as we know caused Him to perspire drops of blood in the Garden of Gethsemane, was the knowledge that his Father was going to forsake Him on the cross the moment He was given the bitter cup to drink which was filled to the brim with the sins of mankind. This is the very essence of hell which is worse than the traditional view of the flames, fire and brimstone of hell. It is to be cut off from the source of everything that is good and wholesome — from God the Father’s love, his compassion, his light, his goodness, his loving-kindness, his mercy, his grace, his very life which is eternal, everlasting and indeed from Him who is the Living Water. When Jesus cried out “I thirst” is was first and foremost a spiritual thirst because He was separated from God’s Living Water when He hung on the cross. It was the same thirst the rich man experienced in hell when he begged father Abraham to send Lazarus and to put a small drop of water on his tongue. He was actually praying for a drop of God’s Living Water which he had refused to take and to drink when he was still alive on earth (Revelation 22:17). His remorse for not having taken God’s Living Water when he had the opportunity to do so during his lifetime on earth was worse than an unending burning flame, fire and brimstone.

So how should we think or not think about hell? The obvious answer is that we shouldn’t think about hell the way Rob Bell thinks about it but rather think about it the way Jesus taught us to think about it. If questions were Jesus Christ’s modus operandi to convey his truth and to provoke his audiences to seek the truth, then it is incumbent upon us to do the same. A question we need to ask is whether the flames of hell are physical flames as we know them to be here on earth or should we rather regard them as human consciences burning with flames of excruciating remorse that can and never will be  dowsed for all eternity. To find an answer we need to ask another question: How is a sinner’s spiritual thirst  satisfied and quenched in this life here on earth? And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely. (Revelation 22:17). Obviously the water spoken of here is not physical. No amount of physical water can quench a person’s deep spiritual need which is to be reconciled to God, the very source of eternal life. The Samaritan woman whom Jesus encountered at Jacob’s well on his way to Jerusalem can attest to that. Several places in Scripture refer to God as the “Fountain of Life.”

I remember how as a kid I loved to visit my uncle’s farm in the Free State, South Africa, and walk through the forest to a quiet spot where there was a fountain. It never stopped gushing forth some of the purest, clearest water I had ever seen and tasted. There was no other water that quenched my thirst so satisfactorily and suitably as the fountain water. Why? Because it was water that never stopped gushing up from deep down under the earth to the surface. In that sense it was living water; it was a never-ending brilliant flow of crystal clear and pure water. In the same way God’s Living Water that has never stopped gushing forth into everlasting life (John 4:13, 14), is still available to everyone who thirsts after righteousness and salvation, this side of the grave. Eternal life amounts to the taking and the drinking of God’s Living Water in this life. In hell people will be longing to drink the Living Water which they had forfeited of their own accord for all eternity. This will be worse than a flame because it is an unquenchable fire in their innermost being that is going to cause their never-ending torment in hell. Sadly most people do not want God’s Living Water and are content to drink from the muddy pools of this world and its many religions.

It is noteworthy that the rich man did not beg for a reprieve but for a little drop of water to be placed on his tongue. Did he beg for physical H²O? Hardly, because, once again, physical water cannot possibly satisfy or quench spiritual thirst. He probably could ask for a reprieve but somehow knew that his sentence could never be overturned and that he would remain in hell for all eternity. In stead, the one thing he wanted in hell was the one thing he could have had when he was still alive on earth — God’s Living Water that springs up into eternal life — but refused to take and drink it on earth.

The overriding desire of people in hell is to have their intense spiritual thirst, caused by their eternal separation from the Fountain of Living Water. The complete absence of God’s Living Water in hell can be compared to one thing only — an excruciating pain akin to flames of utter hopelessness, despair and unending remorse. It will be like a raging, tormenting fire in their spirits enver to be quenched or satisfied for all eternity. Imagine billions of people crying out day and night: “I could have taken the Living Water God freely offered me to drink. It was offered to me on countless occasions but I refused to take and drink it. Help me! help me! please give me a tiny drop of His Living Water to quench the insatiable burning desire in me for His Living Water. Please . . . have mercy on me!” Hell is to yearn for God’s Living Water from everlasting to everlasting and to heap upon yourself coals and flames of utter remorse and hopelessness for not having taken it freely when it was offered to you on earth.

Another noteworthy observation is that the rich man never once blamed God for having to be in hell for all eternity. He never once shook his fist at God and cried out: You are a cruel, heartless and unloving God. You are supposed to be a God of love, compassion, mercy and loving-kindness. It is your fault that I am suffering in hell. How could you have done such a horrendously cruel thing to me? No! there ws none of this on the lips and tongue of the rich man. He knew that he deserved God’s righteous punishment for his rejection of the most supremely divine gift ever to be presented to mankind – God’s only begotten Son, Jesus Christ. Now, listen to Rob Bell’s tirade against God’s righteous judgments and he is not even in hell.

Jesus’ doctrine on the existence of a literal hell “is misguided, toxic and ultimately subverts the contagious spread of Jesus’ message of love, peace, forgiveness, and joy that our world desperately needs to hear?” Indeed, the Jesus story is first and foremost about the love of God for every single one of us. But there is more to this story. There is the relational aspect of this love that needs to be looked at in an equally loving way. The emergent fraternity has the knack to remind us again and again that Christianity is a relational spirituality. And yet when the very bedrock of this relational spirituality vies for their loving attention, they seem to shun it with contempt. It is fruitless to talk about God’s love for the entire world while His demand for the reciprocate love of his creatures is overlooked so easily — “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” (Luke 10:27).

How can you say you love God when you do not love your neighbor and how can you say you love your neighbor when you do not love God? And how can you say you love your neighbor when you do not tell him/her of God’s demand for his/her reciprocal love in the acts of repentance, faith, sanctification and obedience? You cannot talk about a relationship when love is reduced to a one-way transaction. Allow me to explain: It is common knowledge that a marital relationship between a bridegroom and his bride is often used to describe the intimate relationship between Jesus Christ and all the believers. Having said this, I want us to look at a scenario that most likely never happened.

Imagine Rob Bell saying to his sweetheart “Honey, I love you with all my heart. Will you marry me?” And she looks at him and replies to his face “No! don’t be silly. I don’t love you and I will not marry you.” Can there be a lasting and loving relationship between Rob Bell and his sweetheart when his love is not returned in kind? When Abraham sent his servant to find his son Isaac a wife, he did not force her to leave with him. When her family members asked Rebekah “Will you go with this man?” She said, “I will go.” (Genesis 24:58). Marriage vows are consummated when both parties say “I will.” It affirms Rob Bell’s statement: ““Everybody is forced to believe or think or subscribe to a particular thing, but there are those who are able to choose — how awesome is that?” Yep! awesome it is, but ironically Rob Bell is not practicing what he’s preaching. In fact, he forces every single person who ever lived to return God’s love in kind, forces them into a relationship with Him and forces them to live with Him for all eternity when most of them have no desire to do so (Jeremiah 6:16).  Bell’s love for his sweetheart would never allow him to force her to love him but he expects God to do what He wouldn’t and couldn’t do? What kind of love is that?

We may argue that none of us would send someone to a place like hell who do not return our love in kind. That would be a very unloving thing to do, right? Can I remind you what Jesus said? “Later on he said to them again, “I am going away, and you will look for me, but you will die in your sins. You cannot come where I am going.” (John 8:21). No-one ends up in hell because God wants them there. God has no pleasure in the death of the wicked (Ezekiel 33:11). Sinners go there because they die in their sins of their own accord and according to their own doing. I used to be a fire attendant at the firm I worked for years ago. It was my duty to fire drill my colleagues on our floor once a month. They new exactly where the fire exits were and they knew exactly what to do when a fire broke out. No one could point a finger at me and blame me that they never knew.

Jesus said “I am the Door” (John 10:7) and anyone who does not enter through Him cannot expect to escape hell. They will perish. God has given his most precious gift to mankind, his only begotten Son, and it pleased Him to bruise Him (Isaiah 53:10) so that every single person who believes in Him should not perish. There is no need for anyone to die in his/her sins because God has provided a Way out and that is to die in his Son (the Living Ark), not in your sins. Hell, therefore, is the place where sinners go who die in their sins and not in Jesus Christ, the only Person in the entire universe who is authorized by Almighty God to forgive and remove sins (Luke 5:24).

Bell’s earthalization of hell

The word “earthalization” is my own concoction and its intended meaning is to bring the ethereal, other-worldly places like heaven and hell down to earth. Bell’s hell is “the big, wide, terrible evil that comes from the secrets within our hearts all the way to the massive, society-wide collapse and chaos that comes when we fail to live in God’s world God’s way” (Love Wins, p. 93). And yes, you may have guessed it, the only way to counteract hell on earth is to bring in the Kingdom of God here and now through an incarnational spirituality. The world is what we make of it. It can either be a world of peace and joy and happiness or a world of chaos that comes when we fail to live in God’s world God’s way. Our failures and successes depend on what we want and what we want is what we get because Love wins in the end, as the Bell goes.

Consider the portion in Revelation 14 that says: “And the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever: and they have no rest day nor night, who worship the beast and his image, and whosoever receiveth the mark of his name.” (Revelation 14:11). Oh! pardon me, that only applies to those who worship the beast or the antichrist. Ok! but what about those who are permeated with the spirit of Antichrist who has always been around and teaches his followers there are no realities such a literal virgin birth, a literal resurrection, a literal ascension, a literal Parousia, a literal Trinity, and last but not least a literal hell. In an effort to tone down the reality of a literal place of eternal torment, Bell claims that he has studied every single verse in the Bible, in the old and new Testaments, where the word “hell” appears and then proceeds to prove that when Jesus spoke about hell he merely referred to a place on the outskirts of Jerusalem where the inhabitants dumped and burned their rubbish. This place is known as Gehenna. The bottom-line for Rob Bell is: “So the next time someone asks you you if you believe in an actual hell, you can always say, ‘Yes I do believe that my garbage goes somewhere . . .’” That’s it! The next important thing to know is how to avoid an actual hell. Well, that’s very easy — send someone else to dump your garbage, what the hell. And remember, when his Father deserted Him on the cross as an acute reminder of the fearful and dreaded garbage dump in the valley of Hinnom (Jerusalem), Jesus, the One who spoke more about the garbage dump than anyone else, called out in agony, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Here’s what Rob Bell has to say about Gehenna.

That’s it? Really? The Hebrews were turned off by the afterlife because the Egyptians built pyramids and ornate coffins and buried themselves in rooms filled with gold and therefore were far more interested in the ethics of and ways of living this life? Really? And this prompted them to be far less articulate and definitive in their commentary on what happens after a person dies? Really? What about those portions in the Old Testament where the word “hell” is not explicitly used but a phrase such as “everlasting contempt” clearly refers to hell? “And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. (Dan 12:2). It is glaringly evident why Rob Bell never once mentions verses like Daniel 12:2 in his book. Could someone please tell me why?

The emergent fraternity’s claim that God’s Kingdom is already here and now compels them to bring something as horrible as hell, which allegedly is out there somewhere else, into the realm of our present existence. You cannot have a hell somewhere else when you have a heaven (Kingdom of God) here and now, can you? Therefore we need to localize it in order for it to be more palatable and believable. The traditional churchy view of fire and brimstone, eternal punishment, torment, eternal separation from God, excruciating pain and gnashing of teeth are all elements of a bad and uncontrollable story which needs to be toned down to something not so ethereal but very earthy so that we may turn the bad story into something not so bad and controllable.

“So how should we think, or not think, about hell?” Bell asks after coming to the conclusion that for many in the modern world — ravaged by escalating wars, violence, child abuse, murders, drug abuse, divorce, abortions etc. etc., etc. — the idea of an eternal hell is merely a holdover from primitive, mythic religions that use fear and punishment to control people for all sorts of devious reasons. And so the logical conclusion is that we’ve evolved beyond all of that outdated belief, . . . even to the extent that in our quantum evolvement we can reach godhood through contemplative spiritualties by breathing God in through yoga practices (Listen to MP3 here).

So how should we think about hell?, asks Bell on page 70. The most compelling way to think about hell, as I have already mentioned, is to fit it into the realm of our present existence — to localize it, to earthalize it (my own word). By doing that we can bring it closer to our own experiences on earth and find ways to control it. And the most compelling way to do that is to find someone who will be able to put an end to wars, injustices, poverty, disunity, etc.,etc., etc., someone who will restore our humanness and teach us how to change our weapons of mass destruction into plowshares and our atom bombs into pruning hooks. Then we will have at last eradicated all vestiges of hell on earth and there will be peace on earth at last — a new earth and a new heaven. Jesus Christ warned: “I have come in my Father’s name, and you do not receive me. If another (Antichrist) comes in his own name, you will receive him. (John 5:43). Yep! the great peacemaker who “. . . through his policy . . .  shall cause craft to prosper in his hand;. . .  and by peace shall destroy many . . .” (Dan 8:25), is just waiting for his cue to appear on the world scene, and, guess what? — Rob Bell and his buddies in the Emergent Church are paving the way for him to take over. Does this sound a little farfetched?

Whereas Rick Warren used the genocide in Rwanda as a backdrop to introduce his PEACE PLAN to the world, Rob Bell uses it to paint a picture of hell on earth. During his visit to Kigale, Rwanda in December 2002 he saw many children who had been mutilated by machete wielding soldiers. To affirm with conviction that he believes in a literal hell he says:

Of Course.

Those aren’t metaphorical missing arms and legs.

And yet when he eventually comes to the rich man and Lazarus where Jesus articulates with perfect clarity the horrible realities of hell, he uses Abraham’s and the rich man’s conversation as a metaphor to explain what Jesus really meant by losing your life for the sake of Him and his Gospel. The very first word Rob Bell uses as a metaphor is “water.” Instead of using it for what it was originally intended for — to quench your thirst, Rob Bell uses it as a double metaphor. “When you give someone water,” he says “you’re serving him.” I suppose this is the reason why they did not give Jesus water to drink when he said “I thirst” and pressed a sponge filled with sour vinegar to his lips because they refused to serve Him.

So, how do we accomplish something so overwhelmingly pragmatic? The best way to turn a bad story into something not so bad is to overemphasize the love of God without mentioning the flipside of his love. Listen again to Rob Bell when he introduces his winning love in “Love Wins.”

Have you noticed how nimbly Rob Bell quotes the first part of John 3:16 “For God so loved the world . . .” and conveniently leaves out the rest of the verse “that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” God’s love is not merely a “say-love.” He never merely says “I love you” and then settles it with a full stop. His love is a demonstrative love, a giving away love, a caring and sacrificial love for those who are wandering carelessly on their way to perdition (Isaiah 53:6), a love that planted a cursed tree (cross) in every single person’s destructive path of sin and trespasses and had his only spotless and sinless Son crucified on it. He cries out: “Stop here! Do not continue on your destructive way to perdition. The penalty for your sins has been paid in full. There’s no need for you to continue on your journey to eternal punishment in hell. Receive by faith my Son and He will prepare you for a life of eternity in heaven with Me.” God never sends sinners to hell. Let me repeat that: GOD NEVER SENDS SINNERS TO HELL, simply because He did not create hell for human beings. He created hell for the devil and his angels (Matthew 25:41). They are going there of their own accord because they have chosen to follow Satan and his lies in stead of Jesus Christ, the Way, the Truth and the Life.

If they hated Him on earth why would they want to love him in heaven? OK! their hearts are going to be changed by gentle persuasion after their demise. Whoopee! let the pre-death creatures eat, drink and be happy, fornicate, rape, murder, make war, sodomize and abuse kids, oppress the poor and the marginalized, shake their fists in anger at God in his heaven and blame Him for all the hellish suffering on earth, reject Christ with all their mind, strength and will, and flare the flames of hell on earth FOR when they die and become post-death creatures God is going to change their hearts with a heaven shattering, monergistic love. (Does this sound a lot like Calvinism? Not the after death bit but the part that says “with monergistic love.”).

If God is eternal then his justice and righteousness must of a necessity be equally eternal and if these attributes are eternal then his just punishment and retribution of his adversaries/enemies (the devil/fallen angels/homo-sapiens Christ rejecters) must of a necessity also be eternal. If one single attribute I mentioned was not as eternal and everlasting as He, He could never have been God. He would merely have been a demigod (a revered man who is treated like a god). That would have been just grand because then we would have had no one to judge mankind righteously and justly. We would have had no Jesus to bear the brunt of God’s righteous judgments on the cross in our behalf. The absence of a real God equals the absence of a real Jesus and the absence of a real Jesus equals the absence of real judgment. How can you expect a God who is love to be one hundred percent love but fifty percent just and righteous. That’s impossible. Voila! no righteous judgment equals no hell. No! this is not what the martyred saints who had been slain by the Christ rejecters on earth say in heaven. Here are their words:

And I also heard the angel of the waters say, Righteous (just) are You in these Your decisions and judgments, You Who are and were, O Holy One! Because they have poured out the blood of Your people (the saints) and the prophets, and You have given them blood to drink. Such is their due [they deserve it]! And [from] the altar I heard [the] cry, Yes, Lord God the Omnipotent, Your judgments (sentences, decisions) are true and just and righteous! (Revelation 16:5-7, Amplified Bible).

Will everyone be saved . . . eventually?

If man has a free-will and his ability to choose is an awesome thing, as Rob Bell affirms in his book “Love Wins,” his presupposition that everyone will choose Christ after death is rather flimsy. How sure can you be that everyone who chooses to reject Christ and his cross in this life is going to change their minds (“metanoia,” repent) and choose to love and obey Him in the afterlife? Has the rich man in hell repented of his rejection of Christ since his conversation with father Abraham who reminded him that even if someone from the dead  was sent to warn his five brothers, they still would not listen? If they refused to heed the warnings of Moses and the prophets (the Bible) nothing would convince them to repent. It is evident from this narrative in the New Testament that God’s Word (from Genesis to Revelation) is sufficient to convince people of their fallen state and their final destination in hell if they refuse to repent. Bell’s entire dissertation on hell in his book “Love Wins” is a flagrant rejection of God’s Word. He has all the things Moses and all the prophets had written in God’s Word at his disposal but refuses to listen. He is doing exactly what the rich man’s five brothers had done and that is to shun God’s Word. Not even someone sent from hell to warn him will convince him that he is completely wrong.

The prophet and apostle John who was banished to the island of Patmos wrote in Revelation 20:10 that the devil will be cast into the Lake of Fire where the beast (Antichrist) and the false prophet will already have been incarcerated for a thousand years. What hope does the Antichrist and the false prophet have of being released from the Lake of Fire? Are they going to repent of their sins and eventually gain admittance into the Kingdom of heaven? Please don’t count on it that there will be an opportunity to repent after death. That’s a lie from the pit of hell.

This comment is mainly about John Piper’s tweet on Twitter “Farewell Rob Bell.” but I would like to start with Stephan Joubert’s comment on e-church as a kind of introduction.

Stephan Joubert’s emergent/paradoxical approach to the Bible radiantly shines through in his most recent comment on e-church. In his discussion of Rob Bell’s highly controversial book “Love Wins” he seems to want to tip-toe through a minefield without detonating one. To say this in a different way: He allows the scale to tip over a wee bit to Bell’s side of the fence, without him having to compromise his apparent love for the Bible. Allow me to explain. To prove that Rob Bell is not a universalist and that he firmly believes in the existence of a literal hell, he quotes him as saying:

“We see hell on earth all around us all the time. We actually see lots of people choosing hell. … We see oppression, we see tyranny, dictators using their power.”

Having affirmed with these words that he does in fact believe in a literal hell here on earth (as if that settles it), Stephan Joubert delivers his piece de resistance in his closing statement which, according to his own thinking, corroborates his own ‘conservative’ view of the Bible.

The only way to participate in debates such as this is to firstly read the book… unfortunately! it’s just not fair to respond to hear-say opinions of others. As for me, I love the Bible more… and believe it! (Emphasis added).

Ok! since we’ve now established that Stephan Joubert has read Rob Bell’s book but that he loves the Bible more, I ‘m sure he wouldn’t mind if we elaborated on his love for the Bible a little more. He loves it when Rob Bell says hell is not eternal but merely a temporal form of punishment on earth which mankind imposes on itself through oppression, tyranny, dictators and their overt powers but he loves the Bible more which declares without any hesitation that hell is eternal and the most horrendous place imaginable. The reason why Stephan Joubert must do this egg dance is because he cannot retract his past eulogies of Rob Bell. He must maintain a very high opinion of Rob Bell at all costs while claiming to love the Bible more. Let us now look at Joubert’s many eulogies of Rob Bell in the past and compare it with his “more-ish” love for the Bible.

Would you mind if I reminded you what Paul wrote?

For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach, except they be sent? as it is written, How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace, and bring glad tidings of good things! But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Esaias saith, Lord, who hath believed our report? So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. (Romans 10:13-17) (Emphasis added).

Let us now return to Stephan’s “lesser” love for Bell and his book “Love Wins” to prove to you that he loves God’s Word more and believes it.

The ploy to equate the biblical description of an eternal hell with the temporal suffering of men, women and children at the hands of oppressive tyrants and dictators on earth is a very subtle way of suggesting that only a tyrannical and oppressive God would allow human beings to suffer the eternal pangs of hell. Allow me to repeat what Bell wrote:

“We see hell on earth all around us all the time. We actually see lots of people choosing hell. … We see oppression, we see tyranny, dictators using their power.”

Have you noticed the connection Bell makes between tyrants and dictators with the God of the Bible? The very first important thing to realize is that God did not create hell for human beings; He created it for the devil and his fallen angels (Matthew 25:41). Hell, therefore, is primarily a place of punishment for the devil and his angels who rebelled against God and ventured to dethrone Him (Isaiah 14:12-17; Ezekiel 28:13-19). If hell is already on earth then we must assume that the devil and his angels as well as those on God’s left hand (unbelievers) have already been cast into hell. That, in essence, would mean that the believers are living side by side with the devil, his angels and those on God’s left hand (unbelievers) in hell. Not even Christians with the most elementary knowledge of the Gospel (of whom I am one) would believe such nonsense because they know and believe what father Abraham said to the rich man who was tormented in the flames of hell (Luke 16:2—31), when he asked him to send someone from amongst the dead to warn his five brethren,. “. . . between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, in order that those who would pass from here to you may not be able, and none may cross from there to us.” (Luke 16:26) Whoa! now we have a problem! If we see hell all around us all the time, as Rob Bell says, it would quite naturally mean that the great chasm which father Abraham said was fixed between paradise and hell has been removed. Ah! and that’s exactly what Rob Bell tries to do when he diligently morphs a chasm (gulf, abyss) into a heart. Listen to what he says on page 75.

Second, note what it is that man wants in hell: he wants Lazarus to get him get him water. When you get someone water, you’re serving him.

The rich man wants Lazarus to serve him.

In their previous life, the rich man saw himself as better than Lazarus, and now, in hell, the rich man still sees himself as above Lazarus. It’s no wonder Abraham, says there’s a chasm that can’t be crossed. The chasm is the rich man’s heart! It hasn’t changed, even in death and torment and agony. He’s still clinging to the old hierarchy. He still thinks he’s better. (Emphasis added)

The rich man would never have begged for mercy if he haughtily wanted Lazarus to serve him in hell. Someone who begs for mercy is hardly in a position to see himself as better than anyone else. If he’d been arrogantly commanding Abraham to send Lazarus to serve him, his plea to “have mercy on me” would have been completely at odds with his command for service. The Bible clearly says “And he cried and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame.” (Luke 16:24). Was that the reason why the Roman soldier pressed a sponge filled with sour vinegar to Jesus’ lips in stead of water because he refused to serve Him?

If the chasm is the rich man’s heart, as Bell claims, what did the other inhabitants do to turn their hearts into chasms? Are they in hell because they too were clinging to the old hierarchy? In that case we are going to end up with a hell of a lot of chasms (billions of heartily buoyant chasms that demand to be served by those in heaven) while father Abraham distinctly mentions only one chasm. Or maybe there is only one heart-chasm – that of the rich man. Wow! who chose his heart to be the collective chasm that separates them all form God and the believers?

Rob Bell mentions several gruesome incidents to illustrate his view of hell on earth.

• He’d seen many kids in Rwanda who had their limbs hacked off by machete wielding soldiers. What kind of hell is this when the innocent are the ones who suffer the earthly pangs of hell whilst the perpetrators get off scot free? In God’s economy of righteous judgment the machete wielding culprits deserve to suffer this hell and not the innocent children, that’s if hell in all its ugliness is part and parcel of our earth.
• He’d also sat with a woman while she talked about what it was like to be raped. Once again, it is the innocent victim who suffers the pangs of hell on earth and not the rapist. What kind of justice is that?
• He’d also witnessed the “ugly” intentions of a man who realized that he was about to die and had his will rewritten to get back at his family members whom he despised. Once again, it was not the person who’d been spiteful who experienced hell on earth but his family members whom he despised.
• What about Hitler? He caused billions to suffer in an earthy hell he had created for others and not for himself. He lived like a king whilst others suffered the worst kind of atrocities. What kind of earthly hell is that?

In all of these instances Rob Bell suggests that hell on earth is usually experienced by innocent victims whilst the perpetrators who cause the hell escape it. That’s a very strange and unbiblical way to see hell, to say the least. Hell, in the biblical sense of the word, is not the result of something a human being does or has done to another human being. Hell is a creation of God. He made it for the devil and his angels. Nevertheless, every person who rejects Jesus Christ as the only Way to escape God’s righteous judgments, deserve to go there with Satan and his angels. Had people been cast into hell for what they had done on earth, each and every person who had ever lived on earth would have to go there (Romans 3:23). People are cast into hell for one and one reason only – the rejection of Jesus Christ as the only Person capable of saving you from an eternal hell.

To summarize Rob Bell’s rendition of hell, the following

• Jesus came to earth to bring a social revolution (page 75). What happened to: “I did not come to bring peace but a sword!” (Matthew 10:34) and “For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save the lost.” (Luke 19:10).
• Jesus came to call all people to human solidarity and to abolish the previous systems and hierarchies of clean and unclean, sinner and saved and up and down because these things no longer mean what they used to to God (page 75). What happened to: “For I came to turn ‘a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. A person’s enemies will be members of his own family.” (Matthew 10:35-36).
• Everybody is a brother, a sister. Equals, children of the God who shows no favoritism. (page 75, 76) What happened to: “ Behold my mother and my brethren! For whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is my brother, and my sister, and mother. (Mark 3:34-35).
• To reject this new social order was to reject Jesus, the very movement of God in flesh and blood (page 76). What happened to?: “For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God. (1Corinthians 1:18). The rejection of his cross and not of an alleged new social order He supposedly inaugurated is equal to a rejection of God the Father.

Here now is Rob Bell’s final analysis of an “eternal hell.”

The best place to look for the meaning of “everlasting,” “for ever,” “eternal” is John 3: 16 because it articulates the meaning of eternal in a nutshell.

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting (aiōnios) life. (John 3:16)

Rob Bell only quotes the first half of the verse on page vii in the preface of his book “Love Wins.”  Why? Well, it is obvious that he wants to emphasize God’s love at all costs without giving equal primacy to his justice and his righteousness. Two other passages in Scripture we need to look at to understand the two radically diverse places people go to after death are the following:

In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also. (John 14:2-3) (Emphasis added)

If Jesus Christ is eternal, which of course He is, the place where He is must also be eternal and that’s where He says all true believers in Him will be taken after death. The opposite thereof is also found in the Gospel of John.

Then said Jesus again unto them, I go my way, and ye shall seek me, and shall die in your sins: whither I go, ye cannot come. (John 8:21) (Emphasis added).

To die in your sins simply means that you have not received/acknowledged by faith the fact that Jesus has already paid for your sins on the cross in this life. You cannot receive it by faith after your demise. His payment (tetelestai) is a universal payment for He has indeed paid the price for the sins of all mankind but only a few receive it by faith. Most people reject it (1 Corinthians 1:18). These are the ones to whom He says: “you cannot come where I am if you die in your sins.” Who do you prefer to believe — Rob Bell, who says you have a second chance even after death to be saved and go to heaven or Jesus Christ, the Son of the living God who said you cannot possibly come to where He is if you die in your sins?

It is interesting to note that the rich man didn’t ask for water to dowse the fires of hell but to cool his tongue. It is even more interesting to note that Stephan Joubert, who loves the Bible more and believes it, says that Jesus had come to earth to put out the flames of hell. Why would He want to put out the flames of hell which He created for the devil and his angels? Are they also going to be admitted into heaven eventually?

Furthermore, it would mean that the persecution, martyrdom and affliction the Christians are presently suffering at the hand of oppressive Communist dictators and tyrants are suffering the pangs of hell? Really? Whoa! now we’ve got another big problem. It would quite naturally mean that God’s own children are in hell together with all the Christ rejecters on earth. Allow me to remind you that not even the severest oppression and suffering at the hand of dictators and tyrants, the devastating holocaust under Hitler and the imminent great tribulation under antichrist can be compared to the horrendous and unspeakable horrors of hell. Whereas now on earth even the greatest Christ rejecters benefit from the grace and mercies of God (Matthew 5:45), in hell they are going to be separated from God for all eternity. Why do you think Jesus cried out on the cross: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me.” He was forsaken of God on the cross so that those who believe in Him should never in all eternity be forsaken by God. I can assure you that the Christians in Communist countries do not see their afflictions and suffering at the hand of oppressive tyrants and dictators as a condition of hell. Indeed they see it the way Jesus sees it – as a privilege and a blessing. (John 15:18).

Rob Bell is no pumpkin; he knows how to juggle the meaning of words. For instance, he is rather deft and clever to turn all the negative things people call him into something positive. Many critics call him a heretic. “Everybody is forced to believe or think or subscribe to a particular thing, but there are those who are able to choose — how awesome is that?” Bell said, laughing. Any normal dictionary defines a heretic as someone who is a professed believer who maintains religious opinions contrary to those accepted by his or her church or rejects doctrines prescribed by that church. Not so, says Rob Bell, the etymological root of the word is the Greek word hairetikos which means “able to choose.” However, man’s divinely gifted gift to choose (Joshua 24:15) is not always that beneficial for the chooser, especially when he chooses to reject the truth, and that is what heretic actually means – the ability to choose against the truth. God who is the essence of love forces no one; he forces no one into heaven and neither does he force anyone into hell. Jesus, who is the essence of Truth forces himself on no one and neither does He force anyone to embrace his doctrines. If He is the Truth, the Life and the Way – and Rob Bell acknowledges Him to be just that in his book Love Wins – then He must of necessity be the only One with the prerogative to set the standard for true faith, genuine salvation and righteous judgment. It is rather silly to acknowledge that He is the essence of Truth but then to encourage people to make choices that contradict or reject his Truth. That is pure double-talk – “men with forked tongues” as the red Indians would say. Let me give you an example of Rob Bells double talk. In a video on TouTube called “Rob Bell comes clean” he boldly says that he believes in hell. Ok! that seems to settle it. But wait, he also has something else to say that underscores the emergent prerogative to state the opposite, a paradoxical “truth” without violating Jesus’ Truth. so they say! Listen carefully to what he says and decide for yourself whether he really believes in a literal hell.

For too many people, . . ., what they’ve been told is the good news is actually an ugly truth. They hear that God is full of grace and unconditional love, a God of endless second chances, infinitely patient. But then they hear that God’s grace, love and patience expires at death. “Too late,” they’re told. “You had your chance.” That schizophrenic idea of God is simply untenable, Bell says.

“It’s psychologically unbearable. No psyche can handle that,” he said. “It’s devastating.”

It’s also toxic and a lie. The Good News, Bell insists, is better than that.

“If we have the freedom to choose these things now, that Jesus came to offer us and show us, then I assume that when you die, you can continue to choose these realities because love cannot co-opt the human heart’s ability to decide,” Bell said. “But after you die, we are firmly in the realm of speculation.”

TBC has this to say about Rob Bell’s speculations.

Indeed, Rob Bell is making a fatal assumption that one may “choose reality” after life on earth. On this matter, God’s Word leaves no room for speculation: “It is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment” (Heb 9:27). Tragically, Bell’s “ability to choose” will lead all who place their hope and trust in this deception to their second death (cfPrv 14:12).]

And now, to John Piper. He has caused quite a stir on the internet with his tweet on Twitter when he succinctly wrote: “Farewell Rob Bell.” Nevertheless, both Rob Bell and John Piper are promoting the doctrine of election and irresistible grace. Rob Bell has elected all people to go to heaven whilst John Piper believes that God has only elected a select few to go to heaven. Here’s the irony. Despite Bell’s heretical (hairetikos) ability to choose, he actually leaves no room for anyone to choose. in fact, he deprives those who reject Christ and his cross (1 Corinthians 1:18) the choice of NOT wanting to go to heaven and brazenly forces them into a kind of cattle crush that forces them into heaven. The crush is called “the after-death-choice for-Christ.” Oh! but the choice is still theirs because “love cannot co-opt the human heart’s ability to decide” even after death. If love cannot co-opt the human heart’s ability to decide even after death then neither can it co-opt man’s ability to respond to or reject God’s love after death. The inherent character and quality of the word “choice” is to choose between to opposites. Wouldn’t it be reasonable to say that, if it were true that man still has the ability to decide for or against Christ after death, that some/many/most would nevertheless decide and choose to reject Him, even after death? Rob Bell’s non co-optic choice reminds me of Ford who said that his car is available in any colour but you must choose black.

Where will they end up in eternity – heaven? . . . hell? If Bell believes that all of mankind will vote for Christ after death, he is deliberately imposing on every single human the “choice” to choose Christ. He is actually imposing his will on them to choose Christ after death which is nothing less than coercion and any form of coercion or enforcement has nothing to do with love. Not even God forces his creatures. It is overt oppressive tyranny, the very thing Bell says he loathes. Having said this, we must once again come to the conclusion that there is no difference whatsoever between Rob Bell and John Piper. Both are proponents of the doctrine of irresistible grace. The mathematical equation of this would look something like this:

Election (universal/s-elective) and Irresistible grace

Do you want to meet Jesus? Theo Geyser invites you to meet him here.

About sixteen years ago Coetzee Zietsman, one of the cameramen of the series, “What does God think of us?”on SABC2, produced a similar program for SABCTV. It was probably one of the most shocking programs ever to hit the TV airwaves in South Africa. It showed in graphical detail how South African sangomas (witchdoctors) are initiated into the occult practice of communicating with their dead ancestors. One of the methods used to appease the ancestral spirits and to determine whether they approve of the candidates who have been chosen to become sangomas is the following:

The candidate is told to lie on the ground, usually on her left side opposite a goat which is lain down in a similar position on its right side. Both are covered with a single animal skin that serves as a blanket. The focal point in the ceremony is the goat because it allegedly functions as a medium through which the ancestral spirits communicate their wishes. The candidate must then simulate sex with the goat. If the goat reacts in a positive way, so to speak, it is a sign that the ancestors are pleased with the candidate and that she may proceed to the next part of the ceremony. The goat’s jugular vein is then slit and while a gush of blood spurts out freely the candidate puts her mouth to the gaping wound and starts to drink the blood. Sometimes the blood is caught up in a beaker for her to drink.

Thanks be to God, there are many black South African citizens whose spiritual eyes have been opened to the dangerous and demoniacal bondage they’ve been exposed to while they were sangomas and witchdoctors. Unfortunately they are but a very small number who have escaped the clutches of Satan and now refuse to worship their ancestors. Not only were they saved for all eternity through the unadulterated preaching of the Gospel of Jesus Christ but have been completely liberated from their demon possession. They know exactly what it means when God says: “You will know the truth and the truth will set your free.” The million dollar question however is: do many white so-called Christ-followers know this? Apparently not.

The opening scene of “What does God think of us,” that was broadcast on SABC2 on April 24 shows how a former sangoma who had been saved by the grace of God burns all the paraphernalia she used to supposedly communicate with their dead ancestors. I have written this comment on the program to show you to what extent Theo Geyser, the presenter of the series, will go to demean biblical missionary work amongst all the nations and to sneer at Christians (black and white). There’s a similar incident in Scripture where new converts to Christ Jesus willingly burned their books on magic in public.

And God was doing extraordinary miracles by the hands of Paul, so that even handkerchiefs or aprons that had touched his skin were carried away to the sick, and their diseases left them and the evil spirits came out of them. Then some of the itinerant Jewish exorcists undertook to invoke the name of the Lord Jesus over those who had evil spirits, saying, “I adjure you by the Jesus whom Paul proclaims.” Seven sons of a Jewish high priest named Sceva were doing this. But the evil spirit answered them, “Jesus I know, and Paul I recognize, but who are you?” And the man in whom was the evil spirit leaped on them, mastered all of them and overpowered them, so that they fled out of that house naked and wounded. And this became known to all the residents of Ephesus, both Jews and Greeks. And fear fell upon them all, and the name of the Lord Jesus was extolled. Also many of those who were now believers came, confessing and divulging their practices. And a number of those who had practiced magic arts brought their books together and burned them in the sight of all. And they counted the value of them and found it came to fifty thousand pieces of silver. So the word of the Lord continued to increase and prevail mightily. (Acts 19:11-20) (Emphasis added)

Acts 19:19

Fear, holy fear, opens blind eyes to the Truth and sets bound people free as we’ve seen from the above incident in Scripture. However, few people are aware of the fact that a very important scene from this incident had been removed from the Bible. It depicts a young man who, while the new converts were piling up their magical paraphernalia onto the bonfire, approached them gently and with an unheard of compassion and love in his vocal chords said the following journey-friendly thing:

What this young man said, and you may have recognized the voice as that of Theo Geyser, a leading figure in the Emerging Apostasy (Church) in South Africa, is so extremely important that I must put his words in writing. Here’s what he said – again.

I was wondering. Is this the best way to engage a culture, to burn somebody’s religion and to send somebody to a burning stake (Theo obviously does not know the difference between the burning of magical arts and paraphernalia in public and the burning at a stake of a human being. Suffice is to remind him that the burning of human flesh emits an entirely different odor than the burning of magical books and paraphernalia) by condemning them and to get them on your side and sing a hallelujah chorus (Theo, Theo Theo, the whole purpose in the burning of magical arts is not to get people on your side but to get them on Jesus Christ’s side who condemned the practice of magical arts thousands of years ago in Deuteronomy 18. But then again, you wouldn’t know what the real Jesus of the Bible said because you have long-gone rejected everything He taught and prefer to follow a false Christ). What if the approach need (sic) to be like Jesus, to be more interested in the person than in the method or the expression of their faith? (Well, Theo, wouldn’t you agree that Jesus is more interested in the magnifying and exultation of his Name? Look again at what happened in Ephesus. The burning of their magical arts and their abandonment of the expression of their old faith lead to the greater advancement of the Word of God and to its prevalence amongst God’s people). What if this can be one of the biggest opportunities to broaden your horizon, to meet God and to be changed and be changed yourself in that circumstance? I’m wondering and I think maybe that is the way we need to go if we have a conviction that we can’t take Jesus to anybody but that he’s already present in somebody’s life. Maybe a sangoma can be an opportunity to meet Jesus.

Theo Geyser was in the very fortunate position to personally be with Jesus when He said certain vitally important things to his disciples. Once again I must inform my readers that these precious moments with Theo Geyser, Jesus and his disciples have been omitted from the original Bible but are now incorparated in every new post modern mystical IMAGINE VERSION of the Bible. Why it was left out in the orignal Bible no-one knows? Maybe you can tell me. You will recall that prior to his ascension Jesus said the following:

Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:19-20) (Emphasis added).

Suddenly a young man whose vocal chords resonated with deep compassion and love shouldered his way through the disciples, stood right in front of Jesus and said:

Jesus, aren’t you just a little bit and slightly deluded? Do we really need to go into the whole world to bring you and your message to the lost sheep of Israel and to all the gentile nations out there? Surely, you must have heard what I said recently in my exquisitely “Christ-like-orientated” TV program “What does God think of us” on SABC2? I said: “If we have a conviction that we can’t take you to anybody but that you’re already present in their lives, then we may even get an opportunity to meet you in the life of a sangoma or a witchdoctor. A witchdoctor is nothing else than a healer. You should know that; you yourself are a healer (You should read “The Life of a Galilean Shaman: Jesus of Nazareth in Anthropological-Historical Perspective”, written by Pieter Craffert. It’s just so adorable what he says about You).

Jesus listened in sheer wonderment to Theo Geyser’s emerging/emergent wisdom and said with great appreciation.

Thanks for reminding me, Theo. Hadn’t you done so I would have sent my disciples out into the world for all the wrong reasons. In fact, the entire world loves me so much that I have decided to appoint you as a watchman over all my biblical pronouncements, lest I say something that might offend the world. I really do not want the world to think that I am a fundamentalist. The first thing I want you to do is to remove the atrocious portion in Scripture where I declare that the world hated me before it hated you (John 15:18). That’s an infamous lie! I now humbly admit and ask your forgiveness. Will you do that? You’re quite right. The world does not hate me because I am already in the lives of every single person on earth, even those who call themselves sangomas and witchdoctors. I now realize that there is absolutely no difference whatsoever between the secular (profane) and the religious. Ha! ha! Once again I must admit that I did not know this until I read Stephan Joubert’s excellent prizewinning book “Jesus, a Radical Leap.” Have you read his groundbreaking book? I can assure you, aside from my Book that I wrote, his is the most important of this century. Not even the books by Brian McLaren, Leonard Sweet, Rob Bell (“Love Wins”) and all the other emergent brothers come close to the illustrious magnificence of his book. On page 150 he wrote:

• One correction: Terms like “the real world” and a “religious world” never existed then. Jesus never made a distinction between “us” and “them,” or between the world of the church and the lost world out there. The separation between holy and profane is an artificial creation of the later church with all their cathedrals, cloisters, titles, holy days and limitless perimeters between church and world. Listen carefully, Jesus never instituted it and neither did He approve of it or promote it.
  

  Stephan Joubert

Wow! I must admit that this is a real eye opener to me. Indeed I will listen to Stephan Joubert very carefully because even I can learn from such a great guru as he. I never knew that I championed the idea that we should never distinguish between the religious and the profane. Therefore I would like you as my appointed watchman to remove the following portions in Scripture that in fact do make a distinction between the profane and the religious. I really do not want my readers to think that I was such a sour spoiler of their fun loving lives. In addition, I would like to apologize on behalf of my Father who said “Be ye holy, because I am holy.” What He actually meant was “Be ye paradoxically holy/profane because I am paradoxically holy/profane.” As a token of My and my Father’s sincere apologies I want you to  erase these portions in Scripture as soon as you can. If you really love Me and want to follow Me, you’d best do it at your earliest convenience.

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. (Romans 12:2).

But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth. This is not the wisdom that comes down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic. For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice. (James 3:14-16).

You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Or do you suppose it is to no purpose that the Scripture says, “He yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us”? (James 4:4-5)

Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.  (1 John 2:15).

I must say, I do not like what you said in your closing statement to your program ”What does God think of us.”  You said: Christians often tell me that whoever is a friend of the world is an enemy of God and you must get away from them and isolate yourself. But don’t you think you have gone a little too far in your endorsement of an all inclusive religiosity by your statement that people may find me in the demoniac practices of a sangoma or a witchdoctor? Don’t you realize that the verse you are referring to is a direct command of God the Father? Therefore, you’re wrong to imply that it is merely Christians who tell you this. Let us quote the verse in its proper context and stop misinterpreting what it really says:

• Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? What accord has Christ with Belial? Or what portion does a believer share with an unbeliever? What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; as God said, “I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Therefore go out from their midst, and be separate from them, says the Lord, and touch no unclean thing; then I will welcome you, and I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to me, says the Lord Almighty.” (2 Corinthians 6:14-18).

As you can see idolatry is the issue here. Idolatry in all its forms – and you may check this out with your buddy, Trevor Hudson – is detestable in the eyes of God the Father. He hates idolatry so much that He sent Me to die on a wooden cross (the wooden cross you and your friend, Koos van der Merwe hailed with reverence in your song years ago) so that I may deliver sinners whom Satan and their bondage to their idolatrous ways. Have you never read the scripture that says “To this end was the Son of God manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil” (1 John 3:8b). And yet you glibly counteract Paul in 2 Corinthians 6:14-18 by saying: “I wonder whether that isn’t perhaps the biggest way in which my life testifies against Christ, that such an approach is anti-Christian. Because the whole Gospel  message is that He became human. He doesn’t try to convert the culture in some way but He gave His life for it.”

Do you really think I laid down my life on a cursed wooden cross so that people may remain locked in their culture of idolatry and rebellion against my Father? Are you really so deceived to be convinced that I am already in the lives of people who openly rebel against my Father who loathes and detests their idolatry? Do you mind if I asked you a few more questions? I’m sure you wouldn’t. In any case, you will have to give an account of every word you said on your program in the Day of Judgment.

But I say unto you, That every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment. For by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned. (Matthew 12:36-37)

Here now are my questions.

1) Why didn’t you repudiate two members of the Regina Mundi Roman Catholic Church who respectively said: “Without my ancestors, I can’t do anything” and “We see the ancestors and God as the same thing”? They unashamedly spat in My face and openly rejected Me who once said: “Without Me you can do nothing” (John 5:15).

2) In the light of what one lady said: “We see the ancestors and God as the same thing” why didn’t you repudiate Prof. Tinyeko Maluleke who tried to make a difference between “venerate” and “worship” but didn’t quite succeed. In his own words: “I don’t think that Africans have ever worshiped ancestors in the same way they worship God.” Are there two ways of worshipping – one in reverence for the ancestors and the other in reverence for God? This is the kind of dualism you find in every pagan religion and cult. They allegedly worship God but also something or someone else. The Roman Catholic Church, for instance, denies that they worship Mother Mary but they do in fact worship her.

How can you possibly teach people that I am already in the lives of even the worst kind of idolaters. Have you never heard me say:

• You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. (Romans 8:9)

In conclusion I would like to quote to you an excerpt from an article written by Tom McMahon and Dave Hunt in their monthly newsletter “The Berean Call.”

RELIGION IN THE NEWS

A report and comment on religious trends and events being covered by the media. This week’s item is from Ecumenical News International. A South African archbishop has suggested that a Libation of Blood, a ritual pouring as a symbolic sacrifice honoring the ancestors of black Africans should be incorporated into local Catholic liturgies such as the mass. Archbishop Buti Tlhagale of Bloemfontein said recently, sacrifice to the ancestors continues to be a very common practice among Africans. The slaughtering of an animal, a cow or sheep takes place wherever there is a funeral or marriage feast, or in times of illness, unemployment, family feuds or the birth of a child.

Tom:

Dave, as a former Catholic, I think this is pushing it a little bit. I’m sure there are, particularly traditional Catholics out there who would just go crazy over something like that. But the Archbishop, he makes a point in the article, I’ll pick up on that. He said the practice should be considered in the context of enculturation according to which local indigenous culture and values are a means of presenting, reformulating and living the Christian faith, he suggested. Now Catholic, or otherwise this is not the Christian faith.

Dave:

Well, of course black Africans are making sacrifices to their ancestors. Of course they are still involved in ancestral worship, does that make it right? We’re supposed to go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. We are supposed to deliver people from ancestral worship, from the false ideas. I mean, by this idea then, enculturation, you would accept anything that anybody does. Any witchdoctor, whether it’s in Africa, the South Pacific or in Scandinavia, people have had all kinds of pagan practices down through history, today in North America, North American witchcraft, Indian witchcraft, the medicine men and so forth. This is so much a part of their culture; you cannot separate it from their culture. Therefore, because it’s part of the culture, does that mean then we must incorporate it into Christianity? It doesn’t mean that Christianity is going to destroy culture, meaning some of the purely cultural customs, how you live you know, the houses you live in, the kind of clothes you wear, the tools you have, the way you do your farming. This is culture, but you can’t say because their religion is part of their culture, therefore we must not interfere with their religion. That doesn’t make sense at all because religion will take people to hell. Now, what we’re doing then, according to this Archbishop we are going to compromise Christianity. We’re going to confuse it. We’re going to mix the pagan practices in with Christianity. So, then what are we honoring here at the Mass? I’ve got a lot of problems with the Mass, first of all because it denies the sufficiency and the once for all sacrifice of Christ upon the cross. But it is being made even worse now because we are mixing pagan practices in with this. Tom, we were in Africa recently and this is a major problem there that evangelicals recognize. You’ve got people who come from America, maybe a Benny Hinn or someone else, well meaning and they have these huge crusades and people, supposedly, believe in Jesus, and you give the reports of the thousands or hundreds of thousands who got saved, and the next thing you know these people are back to their ancestor worship. They are back to the belief in the pagan deities that they had before. Have they become Christians? I don’t think that you can be a Christian and also a pagan at the same time. I don’t think you can believe in the true God and in false gods. And in fact, God says that in the very first commandment that He gives to the people ofIsrael. You shall have no other gods before me, I am God, and there is none else. And now we’re going to say well, but because they had these beliefs, it was part of their culture then we’re going to incorporate it with Christianity. That won’t go! It certainly doesn’t agree with “earnestly contending for THE faith once for all delivered.”

Tom:

Dave, there’s another point here. This bishop is black, he’s African, he grew up in this culture obviously, but now he has a Catholic world view, there are many things within Catholic ritual and liturgy that are consistent with pagan worship.

Dave:

They incorporate it wherever they go.

Tom:

Well, for example, ancestor worship, praying to the saints, praying to the dead, this is what ancestor worship for the Africans is. So I could see how this bishop would say, “Look, we can enculturate here, because we do have some common ideas. But these are not Biblical ideas, the Bible condemns as necromancy, communicating with the dead completely.

Dave:

Tom, it’s not just the bishop, the Pope when he visited West Africa he said to the voodoo priest, “You don’t have to give up anything to become Christians, and you worship ancestors, so do we.

Tom:

Well, they would say, venerate. What’s the fine line between those?

Dave:

You go to Haiti, they say Haiti is 85% Catholic, 110% voodoo, and every voodoo ceremony begins with prayers to the Catholic saints. You go to Rio de Janeiro on a holiday, and you will see the Catholics on their knees on the ground by the graves praying, not only to their dead ancestors, but to the saints as well. So, Catholicism has in fact incorporated, this is nothing new, it has incorporated the culture, the religion wherever it has gone, and that is not Biblical and it is destructive of the true faith.

An afterthought to consider very seriously.

There’s something I fail to understand. While you (Theo Geyser)  herald with aplomb and satisfaction the enculturation of pagan magical arts and ancestral worship into the Regina Mundi Roman Catholic Church and obviously into other RC cathedrals, cloisters, seminaries etc., Stephan Joubert speaks very lowly of Roman Catholicism’s cathedrals, cloisters and hierarchal structures because it was allegedly the RC Church who  instituted the distinction between “us and them” and “the real world and the religious world.” (Jesus, a Radical Leap, p. 150). You say the Roman Catholic Church is effectively wiping out the perimeters between the real world and the religious world while Stephan Joubert says the very opposite – that they are strengthening the limitless perimeters between church and world.

A suggestion

The Mosaïek Church in Fairlands, Johannesburg and the Invia Church in Stellenbosh seem to have a calling to unite all cultures and religions under one banner. To speed up their efforts I would like to suggest that they incorporate into their own church services (especially the ones in which their guru Trevor Hudson speaks out against idolatry) the entire ritual sangomas and witchdoctors go through to initiate them into the occult arts of communicating with the dead. That would at least be a new and fresh way to meet Jesus and to bring their members much closer to Him. The following video may serve as a guide to show them how they should do it.

Or maybe they would like to show their congregations the following video as an educational tool. But please do remember Theo Geyser’s words of great wisdom: “Maybe a sangoma can be an opportunity to meet Jesus.

Now remember this folks: “Maybe a sangoma can be an opportunity to meet Jesus.”

So-called muti murders are rampant in South Africa. Is Theo Geyser and his buddies at the Mosaïek Church in Fairlands, Johannesburg and the Invia Church in Stellenbosch suggesting that Jesus Christ is a murderer? Maybe we should change John 8:44 so that it may say the following:

Maybe a sangoma can be an opportunity to meet Jesus. He (Jesus) was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own. For he is a liar, and the father of it.

Are you shocked? You should be because this is exactly what Theo Geyser and his buddies at Mosaïek and Invia, who refuse to repudiate him in public, are saying when they declare with loving compassion that ““Maybe a sangoma can be an opportunity to meet Jesus.” Watch the following video clip and decide for yourself whether Theo Geyser’s statements are blasphemous and the contemplative stillness of his buddies on this matter are equally blasphemous.

Please click on the YouTube button at the bottom right to watch this video.

Here’s another shocking movie showing how human body parts are sold for muti purposes. Please excuse the use of God’s name in vein in this film.

Would the following persons please tell us whether they agree with Theo Geyser when he says: ““Maybe a sangoma can be an opportunity to meet Jesus.” If not, please show us your integrity and the sincerity of your statement that you are followers of Jesus Christ by repudiating him in the strongest possible language in public. Or perhaps they would like to read the following before they take a decision.

http://www.iol.co.za/news/south-africa/terror-after-muti-murders-1.393214

Stephan Joubert

Ron Martoia

Johan Geyser

Johan Geyser & Trevor Hudson

Dries Cronjé

Jacques Bornman

Etienne Schoeman

  AND

All the members of the Mosaïek and Invia churches.

If you really and truly love the Lord Jesus Christ of the Bible you will repudiate Theo Geyser in public. If not, you must be in close cahoots with him and his blasphemous remarks.

Listen again to these words, Theo Geyser and the rest of his buddies.

WHAT DOES GOD THINK OF US? This is the title of a series of programs presented by Theo Geyser on SABC2 and may I add, a very controversial series that misrepresents the God of the Bible in the most brazen way imaginable. Even the title is a misrepresentation of the real content of the series. Instead of telling viewers what God thinks of us Theo Geyser tells his viewers what they should think of God and his doctrines, in this case the doctrine of the virgin birth of Jesus Christ. Last Sunday, April 17, he had an emerging conversation with Rowan Smith, retired Dean of Cape Town of the Anglican Church, and Ben du Toit of the Dutch Reformed Church, as well as several passersby whom he interviewed in the streets of Stellenbosch.

So, what should we think of God? Last Sunday’s topic of discussion was about Jesus Christ’s virgin birth. Was it a literal birth or just a metaphorical or mythical story the Great Author of the Bible conjured up to teach the poor scientifically illiterate creatures in the pre modern world how to cope with the complexities of life and how they should run their lives on their spiritual journey? Perhaps we should begin with Theo Geyser’s closing statement. It not only sums up the entire content of the program but solidifies his personal view of Christ’s virgin birth.

I’m standing in the parking lot. I spent the whole day here chatting to people. What I can understand of the virgin birth this is the best place to talk about it, because God comes to people. And when you find God, you find Him in the dust and amongst ordinary people.

What helps me personally in this debate is to hear Christians who think differently, who say: “Maybe its metaphorical, maybe poetic.” That can also help us. The fact that something is presented in a myth doesn’t mean there is no truth in it. In the lesson of Adam and Eve, whatever it is, there are principles that can help me in my life.

What I also heard is that there are more important things to talk about than only two verses in the Bible on which I should base and build my whole life. And perhaps that’s what God thinks about: What are the important things on which we build our lives?

What on earth is this man saying? Allow me to sum it up as follows.

Because it was God’s purpose to veil or shroud the virgin birth of his Son in a cloud of mystery, he deliberately and covertly included only two verses about the virgin birth in the Bible. The reason He did this was because He feared that mankind would interpret the virgin birth of his Son in a literal way only. That would be too condescending and a travesty of man’s freedom to interpret the Bible in any which way he pleases. In fact, by the inclusion of only two verses about the virgin birth in the Bible He was thinking to accommodate the post modern scholars, pastors and church clergy who, by virtue of ultra modern scientific evidence, no longer have a pre-modern mindset (flat earth worldview) like that of Jesus and his disciples. The two-versed virgin birth in Scripture presents them with a new found liberty which allows them to spread wings of metaphorical and poetic beauty so that they may fly soothingly into a dark mist of apostasy.

To prevent an only literal interpretation He — this God who is found in the dust of insecurities, double-talk, inconsistencies paradoxes and amongst ordinary people — included only two verses in his Word so that man may feel free to interpret it in a metaphorical and/or poetical way as well. That too can help us to speed up our downward spiral into apostasy. The million dollar question, of course, is why He didn’t have his prophets and disciples include hundreds or even thousands of verses on the virgin birth in the Bible? Why didn’t He? Well, maybe the following explanation will help you understand this little enigma a lot better. If God had included more than two verses about the virgin birth in the Bible no one, not even Theo Geyser, would have been able to question God’s track record of never ever telling lies. However, less than four or three makes Him vulnerable to criticism and the liability that He is quite capable of telling lies. Three or four verses could have been a better foundation on which to build our lives and our faith, but only two? . . . . Nah! no one can build his life and faith on only two verses because that alone cannot convince us that God never tells a lie.  The fact is, even if He had included more than two verses on the virgin birth in the Bible, man’s deceitful and desperately wicked heart would have caused him to give birth to some other brilliant reason for not believing in a literal virgin birth. So, what the heck, give them two verses only.

The main reason, however, why God included only two verses on the virgin birth in the Bible, is because it, together with the salvation of mankind, are not the most important things to talk about. Surely, they do not need a virgin birth and its inextricable connection to salvation when there are more important things to talk about, things like how we should build our lives.

The emergent brotherhood of two-versed virginity fame has the audacity to question the veracity of only two verses in the Bible but do not care a hoot to take only one word and embroil their whole argument against the virgin birth around it. In the opening scene of the program it was said that the Hebrew word “Almah,” which is used to describe Mary, means “young woman of marriageable age.”

Recently some Christians have started questioning this literal interpretation of the birth. According to them the textual tradition isn’t ironclad. The Hebrew word “ALMAH” is used to describe Mary which translated means young woman of marriageable age. The churches we spoke to are divided on the issue. There is no definitive answer coming from the Christian community. Why is it then that the virgin birth constitutes one of the cornerstones of Christianity and is repeated Sunday after Sunday in many Christian churches as part of the apostolic creed.

To understand their grossly distorted view and the discrepancies in their argument against a virgin birth we need to take into account the post modernists’ morally bankrupt view on the necessity for purity (virginity) before marriage. How can you expect them to have a biblical view on virginity before marriage when they have no qualms whatsoever about homosexuality? You see, the primitive pre-modern view with regard to marriage amongst God fearing Jews was that women should remain a virgin until she got married. If not, she was summarily stoned to death. Was this not the reason why Mary’s betrothed was willing to divorce her?

Barnes says:

Adultery has always been considered a crime of a very heinous nature. In Egypt, it was punished by cutting off the nose of the adulteress; in Persia, the nose and ears were cut off; in Judea, the punishment was death by stoning, Lev 20:10; Eze 16:38, Eze 16:40; Joh 8:5. This punishment was also inflicted where the person was not married, but betrothed, Deu 21:23-24. In this case, therefore, the regular punishment would have been death in this painful and ignominious manner. Yet Joseph was a religious man – mild and tender; and he was not willing to complain of her to the magistrate, and expose her to death, but sought to avoid the shame, and to put her away privately.

“The word “ALMAH” may very well refer to a young woman of marriageable age but what many so-called Christians fail to acknowledge is that the young marriageable women in the ancient Jewish, pre-modern, primitive, unscientific age were — unlike today’s post modern highly sophisticated and super scientifically superior age — expected to be chaste and pure before their marriage, or else they were stoned to death. Apart from this, the word in ancient Hebrew does not only mean a young woman of marriageable age but also refers to a young maiden who is a virgin. Once again, let’s listen to what Barnes says:

The etymology of the word requires us to suppose that it means one who is growing up to a marriageable state, or to the age of puberty. The word maiden, or virgin, expresses the correct idea. Hengstenberg contends, that it means one “in the unmarried state;” Gesenius, that it means simply the being of marriageable age, the age of puberty. The Hebrews usually employed the word בתולה  bethûlâh, to denote a pure virgin (a word which the Syriac translation uses here); but the word here evidently denotes one who was “then” unmarried; and though its primary idea is that of one who is growing up, or in a marriageable state, yet the whole connection requires us to understand it of one who was “not then married,” and who was, therefore, regarded and designated as a virgin. The Vulgate renders it ‘virgo.’ The Septuagint, η αρθένος  hē parthenos, “a virgin” – a word which they use as a translation of the Hebrew בתולה  bethûlâh in Exo 22:16-17; Lev 21:3, Lev 21:14; Deu 22:19, Deu 22:23, Deu 22:28; Deu 32:25; Jdg 19:24; Jdg 21:12; and in thirty-three other places (see Trommius’ Concordance); of נערה  na‛ărâh, a girl, in Gen 24:14, Gen 24:16, Gen 24:55; Gen 34:3 (twice); 1Ki 1:2; and of עלמה  ‛almâh, only in Gen 24:43; and in Isa 7:14.

I’m sure if you asked Theo Geyser whether he believed that Jesus died for his sins on the cross he would immediately say: YES! of course. My next question would be: How does that tie in with your paradoxical view that a metaphorical and poetic view of the virgin birth is just as true and valid as a literal view of Christ’s virgin birth? A metaphorical and poetic view of his birth would inevitably lead to a metaphorical and poetic crucifixion and subsequently also a metaphorical and poetic death for the sins of the world. Imagine someone having to appear before God’s judgment seat saying: “I never believed in a literal virgin birth but I have always believed in a metaphorical and poetic view thereof. I guess that makes me a sinner whose sins have been paid for metaphorically and poetically on the cross. Therefore I am a full-blooded metaphorical and poetic saint which gives You (God) the boldness not to cast me into a metaphorical and poetic hell but to grant me entrance into the blissful glories of your metaphorical and poetic heaven. Guess what God is going to say to this metaphorically and poetically forgiven sinner?

How do these metaphorical and poetic phantasmagoria believers in a metaphorical and poetic virgin birth read their Bibles? Surely they must have read, if ever, in the Old Testament that the lamb slain at Passover had to be without blemish which clearly shows that the Lamb of God to whom the Passover lamb pointed in advance had to be blameless, sinless and without any stain or blemish of sin. Our post modern ultra scientifically educated scholars are forever reminding us that we should read Scripture in its proper context. Are they doing what they are preaching? You must be joking! If they had remained faithful to their own golden rule of proper context they would at least have noticed that the entire sacrificial system in Leviticus categorically states that the Lamb of God had to be sinless. There is no man born of the seed of a man and a woman who is without sin. We are all born in sin. We all enter this world tainted by sin. There is only one Person who could pay in full for our sins and that is a completely sinless and yet fully human Person – Jesus Christ, the Son of the living God who is God Himself and equal with his Father, and hence his virgin birth. Anyone who claims he/she is saved and a Christian and rejects a literal virgin birth is deceived and needs to repent of their evil disbelief/unbelief so that God may pardon and save them.

Instead of asking “What does God think of us” we should rather ask “What does God think of false followers of Christ and false apostles and teachers?” Listen to what Paul says:

Theo Geyser and his buddies at Invia in Stellenbosch, the Mosaïek Church in Fairlands, Johannesburg and on e-church may venture to find a virgin birth that satisfies and includes everyone’s whim, they will never find one. But then again, they have enough time to seek for one because in their spirituality the spiritual journey is more important than the destination. So heaven and hell can wait because they are endlessly seeking for a virgin birth that is not divisive but will bring everyone together in their glorious utopia which they call the Kingdom of God. May God have mercy on their pitiful souls.

Members of the Mosaïek Church in Fairlands, Johannesbburg, of the INVIA community in Stellenbosch and of the e-church website, how long are you going to follow these false apostles and teachers? They are not leading you to an euphoric Kingdom of God here and now; they are leading you straight to hell and I assure you it is NOT a metaphorical and poetic place; it is real and it  is indiscribably terrible and it is eternal. Don’t let Rob Bell and his buddies whose LOVE supposedly WINS tell you that everyone is going to heaven, even those who remain unrepentant unto death. Its a lie from the pit of hell itself.

Paradoxes mean that two things, that seem to contradict one another, are simultaneously true and valid. It is a case of “the one and also the other.” We live in such an “and/also” world. The one thing is true and also the other. Opposites are both true and valid. Life and reality can no longer be placed or explained in black/white categories.

The oldest known PARADOX is the one in Genesis 2 and 3.

GOD:  . . .  thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die (Genesis 2: 17)

SATAN: Ye shall not surely die: . . . (Genesis 3:5).

According to the Emergent “Confusionists,” or rather “ Crazy Mixed-up Kids,” what God and Satan said are both true and valid.

See if you can spot the paradox in the following statement:

The Gospel of emerging churches is not confined to personal salvation; it is social transformation arising from the presence and permeation of the reign of Christ. – Eddie Gibbs & Ryan Bolger (as quoted in Stephan Joubert’s book “Jesus, a Radical Leap”,” p 152)

If personal salvation is the only means to transform a person’s innermost being, to the extent that you become a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17), then it is impossible to transform an entire society without confining your gospel to personal salvation. If a journey begins with the first little step then surely the transformation of entire societies begins with the transformation of the individual. Societies are made up of unique individuals who need to be transformed individually before entire societies can be transformed. Could that great city Nineveh have been transformed if its King and every subordinate had not repented toward God and his Gospel individually? Nay! saith the contemplative brotherhood who have learnt to speak the first language of God in silent solitude, we are able to transform entire societies without having to preach the Gospel of personal salvation. We only need to incarnate or permeate societies with Jesus Christ’s presence and his reign (Kingdom of God).OK! and how do you aim to do that? Well, as Ron Martoia said so eloquently:

Preaching about forgiveness from sin becomes increasingly ineffective in a postmodern world where a sense of guilt and obligation is less often operative. In contemporary American culture, one can no longer assume that people identify themselves as sinners in need of grace. People may not think of themselves as sinners going to hell, but they seek wholeness and recognize they’re not there, (What he should have said, is:  ”. . . and recognize that they are not there [in hell] yet). (Emphasis added). (Read here.)

And as Stephan said with equal contemplative clarity:

[The] “standing up for the truth” efforts of religious people have no real healing effect on society. It only serves to highlight the boundaries between “us” and “them.” It makes religious folks come across more judgmental than ever. But it does not embody Jesus’ words that we need to let our light shine before people in order for them to see our GOOD WORKS and glorify our heavenly Father (Matthew 5:16).

If ever there was a Joubert-Paradox, this is it. Allow me to explain. The word of God says: “if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them. (Isaiah 8:20). In other words, anyone who fails or refuses to stand up for the truth or contend for the faith that was once delivered to us by the apostles, is completely void of any light. Indeed, his/her life is goverened by darkness. And yet the Joubert paradoxical tension between to apparent contradictory things is stretched to its limits when Joubert says that they who do not stand up for the truth are the true light-bearers in this world.

Stephan Joubert quotes Jim Henderson in his book Jesus a Radical Leap (p. 150) who said:

It’s not the number of conversions that count; it’s the number of conversations! (Evangelism Without Additives, 2007) (Emphasis added)

Fancy that! That’s exactly what Peter said on the Day of Pentecost?

“Ok, I really don’t want any of you to get caught up in numbers. I am not concerned about the number of conversions. It’s the conversations amongst you that count. So please, would you be so kind to form little groups of 10 people, 300 groups in all, and begin to converse with one another about your contemplative journey as well as your never-ending quest for the truth.  Remember! There are no absolutes. It is always one truth AND/ALSO another truth that seems to contradict the other but are in fact both true and valid. Therefore salvivic belief in God and his Son is a valid response to His Gospel but so is the rejection of God and his Son equally valid. I also would like to warn you against any arrogant claims that you have stumbled upon the ultimate Truth. Such arrogance only leads you to stand up for the Truth which has no real healing effect on society.”

Imagine the angels in heaven shouting with joy over the number of conversations sinners are having amongst themselves in stead of over the conversion of one sinner (Luke 15:10). This is the kind of nonsense you have to put up with when you start altering the Word of God to accommodate the cultures of the world.

And then, of course, there is  Brian McLaren whose glorious statements exceed the wisdom to overflowing of the emergent at the Mosaiek and e-church:

“Jesus seems to say, ‘The kingdom of God doesn’t need to wait until something else happens ^{(in reference to the Second Advent of Jesus Christ).} No, it is available and among you now…. Invite people of all nations, races, classes, and religions to participate in this network of dynamic, interactive relationships with God and all God’s creation!” . . .  the kingdom of God will be radically, scandalously inclusive. As we’ve seen, Jesus enjoys table fellowship with prostitutes and drunks . . . He affirms and responds to the faith of Gentiles.¹

If the truth with regard to the salvation of individual lost sinners are no longer sufficient for the transformation of societies, what is? Ah! don’t fret because the brotherhood of contemplatives who have learnt to speak the first language of God in silent solitude have found the answer to this complex problem in . . . in . . . in . . . YES! BUDDHISM.

The Emergent Church has an insatiable obsession to care for the poor, the destitute, the downtrodden, the marginalized, the outcast and the suffering in our world. Like Mother Teresa whom they revere greatly for her work amongst the poor in Calcutta, India, they too have a passion to alleviate and even put an end to the suffering of the poor. Jesus Himself said that the Spirit of the Lord was upon Him because He anointed Him to preach the Gospel to the poor (Luke 4:18). Please note, He did not say that He was anointed by the Holy Spirit to put an end to their suffering and poverty (John 12:8), but to preach the Gospel of salvation to them. Neither did He say that He wanted to teach them the contemplative art of conversations but to preach the unadulterated Word of God to them so that they may be saved for all eternity. Who are the poor? In Matthew 5:3 the “poor” are categorically identified as “the poor in spirit” with reference, not necessarily to the poor only, but to every person who knows and acknowledges that there is nothing in himself to please or appease God and therefore must rely entirely on the mercies of God. The man who beat on his breast and cried out in complete abandonment “Be merciful to me a sinner” was a tax collector (publican) who filled his pockets with filthy lucre and therefore was not poor. If Jesus focused his attention on the poor only it would follow that they alone are the lost because He came specifically to seek and to save the lost (Luke 19:10). All the others, the rich, the religious and the have-all’s would have been left-out of his mercy-mission to the lost which is completely untenable.

So how does the emergent fraternity’s compassion for the poor tie in with Buddhism? Let’s begin with Richard Rohr (I refuse to call him Father Richard Rohr in obedience to Jesus Christ who commanded us NOT to call anyone “father” in the spiritual sense of the word  . . . “for One is your Father, even He who is in heaven” [Matthew 23:9]). Richard Rohr, who together with personae like Eckhart Tolle is greatly honored and respected by the e-church fraternity Dries Cronjé and Stephan Joubert, was one of the key speakers at a conference in January 2008, in Albuquerque, on “Jesus and Buddha: Paths to Awakening: Finding the Four Noble Truths in the Heart of the Gospel.” (Emphasis added).

You may recall how I briefly sketched the journey the Gautama Buddha undertook on his quest for enlightenment with regard to the reasons for the suffering in the world. Just as a reminder I would like to repeat what I had said in my previous comment (Idolatry: Can the blind lead the blind-Part 1)

At the age of 29, Siddhartha abandoned his palace, his wife and his son on a quest to find the truth about suffering. He later teamed up with five companions with whom he decided to live an austere life of asceticism. They believed they could reach enlightenment through deprivation of worldly goods, including food and through acts of self-mortification. . . .

When Siddhārtha Gautama Buddha and his companions realized that their severe deprivation of food quite naturally leads to death (the Buddha’s consumption of a leaf or a nut per day nearly caused his death), they resorted to the Buddhist Middle Way, a path that allowed them to lead a more moderate way of self-mortification. Wikipedia notes:

Following this incident, Gautama was famously seated under a pipal tree – now known as the Bodhi tree – in Bodh Gaya, India, when he vowed never to arise until he had found the truth. . .

According to Buddhism, at the time of his awakening he realized complete insight into the cause of suffering, and the steps necessary to eliminate it. These discoveries became known as the “Four Noble Truths,” which are at the heart of Buddhist teaching. Through mastery of these truths, a state of supreme liberation, or Nirvana, is believed to be possible for any being. The Buddha described Nirvāna as the perfect peace of a mind that’s free from ignorance, greed, hatred and other afflictive states, or “defilements” (kilesas). Nirvana is also regarded as the “end of the world,” in that no personal identity or boundaries of the mind remain. In such a state, a being is said to possess the Ten Characteristics, belonging to every Buddha. ((Emphasis added).

You may read a summary of the Four Noble Truths here. I am not going to discuss each Noble Truth separately but would like to draw your attention to the fourth Noble Truth that says the following:

4. The path to the cessation of suffering.

There is a path to the end of suffering – a gradual path of self-improvement, which is described more detailed in the Eightfold Path. It is the middle way between the two extremes of excessive self-indulgence (hedonism) and excessive self-mortification (asceticism); and it leads to the end of the cycle of rebirth. The latter quality discerns it from other paths which are merely “wandering on the wheel of becoming”, because these do not have a final object. The path to the end of suffering can extend over many lifetimes, throughout which every individual rebirth is subject to karmic conditioning. Craving, ignorance, delusions, and its effects will disappear gradually, as progress is made on the path.

The end of suffering, therefore, will be accomplished by the Four Noble Truths which, according to Richard Rohr and his contemplative accomplices are found at the heart of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. If it is true that the Four Noble Truths and its aims are akin to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, then there are no boundaries between the Buddhist concept of Nirvana and the Kingdom of God. And that’s exactly what one of e-church’s gurus, Eckhart Tolle, teaches.

The End of Suffering

To recap what Eckhart Tolle said about the Kingdom of God, the following excerpt will suffice:

When you are ready to hear that message, and that’s really the message that is in every religion – the central message of Buddhism is the end of suffering and even the central message of the teaching of Jesus is finding the pearl of great price, finding the Kingdom of Heaven that is within you here and now as Jesus says –  . . . that of course is the end of living in a state of suffering.

So!  . . . to a very large extent the poor are the originators of their own suffering and the only way to end their self-inflicted suffering is to teach them how to contemplatively meditate themselves into a state of a bigger metanoiac mind so that they may become aware that the Kingdom of God is already in them, here and now. Don’t teach them to repent because that word has become such bad news, especially when weird characters in long overcoats tell you to turn or burn, as Trevor Hudson says, but rather tell them to repent in the beautiful sense of the word which is accomplished through contemplative spirituality.

What is self-inflicted suffering? In South Africa, and I reckon elsewhere in the world as well, poverty and self-inflicted suffering are caused, amongst other things, by gambling, drug and alcohol addiction. Many heads of families amongst black and white citizens alike have good jobs and are quite capable of caring for their families and themselves but have fallen into the abyss of gambling, drug and alcohol addiction, The result, of course, is not only an endless downward spiral into a pit of self inflicted suffering for the head of the family but also for his wife and his children. But please remember, as Eckhart Tolle says, his self inflicted suffering is not caused by his craving for drugs and/or alcohol; his “self-created suffering is created out of resistance to what is, it is created out of an interpretation of something that is. It comes from a thought, from an interpretation, not from the situation.” And so, his self inflicted suffering will only come to an end when he is taught, through contemplative spirituality, that he does not need to seek and find the Pearl of Great Price but that the Kingdom of God is already within Him, here and now. Who needs Jesus of Nazareth when you have a great guru like Eckhart Tolle who teaches that you can conjure up the Kingdom of God in you here and now by merely ending your own suffering and changing your thougt patterns in relation to the moment of NOW (what is)? And this is the man Stephan Joubert and Dries Cronjé of e-church reveres with so much idolized delight?

Is contemplative spirituality just another form of idolatry? To answer this question I would like to take you back to Trevor Hudson’s sermon “Letting God be God in your life again” where he defines idolatry as follows:

Trevor Hudson’s definition of idolatry is spot-on but he seems to have forgotten what he had read in Acts 17 verse 29:

Being then God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man. (Acts 17:29).

Please bear this in mind when I quote to you a few excerpts from Trevor Hudson’s book ”Discovering our Spiritual Identity: Practices for God’s Beloved” (pp. 93-95) and decide for yourself whether he is promulgating idolatry in the form of “an image formed by the art and imagination of man.”

THE KINGDOM OF GOD IS MADE ACCESSIBLE THROUGH THE PRESENCE OF THE CRUCIFIED AND RISEN CHRIST, AND THIS PRESENCE NEEDS TO BE INVOKED IN ORDER FOR US TO EXPERIENCE THE KINGDOM.

Can you think of some external sign which, if strategically placed in your home or place of work, would encourage you to be more mindful of God’s nearby presence?

TURNING IN A CHRIST WARD DIRECTION

The meaning of the Greek word for repentance, metanoia, once again helps us here. It means “thinking about our thinking.” Whereas prior to conversion we lived our lives without reference to Christ, there is now the desire to let him be the center of our thinking and living. Regularly turning our minds toward him is one practical way of ensuring that this happens.

This does not mean thinking only about the Holy One all the time. This could have disastrous consequences concerning the tasks we have to accomplish. I like the story which David Sheppard, bishop of Liverpool. tells about himself. He was play­ing in a crucial cricket test match between Australia and England. He had recently been ordained as a priest. In the outfield he dropped a vital catch. An Australian spec­tator shouted at him from the stands: “Hey, parstor, keep your eye on the ball and take your mind off God:’

We direct the mind Christward by fre­quently affirming the closeness of the Di­vine Presence. Whether washing dishes, doing housework, sitting in the board­room. working on the factory floor or typ­ing reports, we acknowledge God with us wherever we are. These repeated affirma­tions may find their shape in a short prayer inwardly whispered, the recall of a biblical phrase, a silent pausing. Sometimes just re­peating the name of Jesus centers our lives in that portable inner sanctuary where the Most High dwells. This way of invoking the presence of Christ is made known through an easy-to-read little book called The Way of the Pilgrim. It tells the story of a Russian pilgrim peasant who repeated the name of Jesus wherever he went and describes the experiences that resulted from this practice.

With these little affirmations” we are not trying to generate or manufacture the presence of God. The bottom line has al­ready been clearly established: in God we live and move and have our being. Or as Paul elsewhere reflects, “in him all things hold together” (Colossians 1:17). Develop­ing the practice of this mental habit means we are taking this truth seriously and act­ing boldly on it. There come times when dark circumstances, painful relationships and feelings of spiritual barrenness will mock our attempts at this practice. In such moments. continuing with our affirma­tions demonstrates a trusting faith that there is nothing “able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord’ (Romans 8:39 MV).

Habits of holy mindfulness are not eas­ily formed. In their awkward early stages they need all the help they can get. Tangi­ble symbols of the Holy help us in this re­gard. Orthodox Russian believers place an icon in the corner of each room that communities a sense of the sacred to anyone who enters. A business executive friend of mine writes out a biblical verse on his desk­top pad. A stay-at-home mom 1 know plays a music tape of Taize chants while she dusts and sweeps. (Emphasis added).

Why do you need to invoke the presence of the crucified and risen Christ when He has already promised that He would never leave or forsake his true followers? The irony is that Trevor Hudson refers to Matthew 28: 20 (p. 91) where Jesus made his immutable and infallible promise “And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age” but then completely neutralizes the potency of Christ’s promise by declaring that his presence needs to be invoked in order for us to experience the Kingdom of God. It’s more like saying: “Christ’s promises are irrevocably steadfast and true but we need to invoke his promises in tangible ways in order for us to experience his presence.” And how do they aim to do that? Well, Hudson himself says that his presence cannot be generated or manufactured but that tangible symbols such an icon in the corner of each room in your home or Taize chants are little affirmations that strengthen your faith in his promises. When Jesus asked his disciples whether they also wanted to turn their backs on him and leave, Peter said: “Lord, to whom shall we go? you have the words of eternal life.” (John 6:68). He did not say: “Lord, give each of us a little icon of yourself and we will place it in a strategic corner of our home to serve as little affirmations of your words of eternal life. We desperately need to direct our minds Christ-ward by frequently affirming the closeness of Your Divine Presence” No! Jesus Christ’s words (promises) are sufficient to carry his disciples through the debris, problems, inconsistencies and complexities of this world right into the hereafter of eternal bliss and into the never-ending presence of God. Did He not say that his followers should remind Him of his promises (Isaiah 62:6), not that He had forgotten them but that they should know and understand that it is the only way of affirming his promises? His promises are not affirmed by means of external signs (Matthew 16:4), icons or chants but through his followers’ steadfast faith in his promises and their unwavering clinging to his promises, even to the extent that they remind him of his promises day and night. This, however, poses a huge problem for the emergent fraternity, because they do not see the Word of God as a book of certitudes or certainties. To them the Bible (God’s Word) is in flux; whatever it says to you today is not necessarily what it may say to you tomorrow and yet both these sayings, although they may paradoxically seem to contradict each other, are both true. It follows that you can never be certain but merely grapple with Bible truths that seem to be true and valid for today. Hence the emergents’ never-ending quest for the truth on a spiritual journey that is said to be more important than the destination. Here’s what Johan Geyser said in a sermon he delivered at the Mosaïek Church.

Look what happened in the first church. Heathen are saved and now [when] they read [that] the old Christians believed that the covenant guys must be circumcised, the new male Christians said: we do not agree with you. We do not think it should happen and one wonders why. Then they said, Ok, let’s see what the Bible says. Then they took the Bible and they all began to wrestle and to think and talk together and when they had finished (Acts 15:25). they said: It seems right to us and to the Holy Spirit.”  Wow, one gets the impression that the entire future of the church relied on this decision. The only thing you could come up with is: “It seems right.” There’s no authority: Thus says the Lord. This is what the scriptures say. No! it looks to us. They are convinced but they are very humble. They are open. This is where we are now in our journey with the Lord. But let us go along with this thing. This is what the community is now convinced of. Our great peace is [that] the Holy Spirit has worked a great peace in everyone’s heart and we say: Yes, this is the path, this is the next step, this is where we are going. That journey hasn’t ended. We are being challenged by completely new things – new things that are not in the Bible, like cloning, oh we can go on forever [and] mention long lists. And what must we do? And in the community we must converse and we must all come to a place where we say: this is where I am now. This is my conviction and now I begin to act. And it’s a journey; it can change. Three or four years later it may be something different. It’s not wrong. The things are not solidified in concrete slabs. It’s a road we have to take.

The Rabbis have a prayer they pray when they do not understand the Bible. If there’s a verse they do not understand, they ask: Lord, please help me at the right time that this thing may open up to me so that I may know what its about. We must learn how to live with uncertainties; we must learn how to live with paradoxes. There are things I believe I do not know how to bring them together. Sometimes I feel that both the things are correct. That’s all I know and its OK. There’s mystery, there’s paradox, we do not know, we are on a journey.

This kind of gibberish usually ensues when you deliberately divorce God’s Word from his character. The Calvinists are guilty of the same thing. Single verse eisegeses has always been a risky business. You cannot take a single text and embroil an entire exegesis around it. First off, the disciples never said “It seems right to us and to the Holy Spirit.” In all the known translations of the Bible verse 28 of Acts 15 reads as follows.

For it seemed good to the Holy Ghost, and to us, to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things;

The Holy Ghost is mentioned first and not the other way around as Johan Geyser suggested. It clearly shows that the Holy Spirit took the initiative in solving the entire dispute in Jerusalem and not the disciples. There are two diametrically opposing ways of approaching the problem. You can either ascribe to the Holy Spirit a sense of uncertainty, doubt, vagueness, indecision, hesitation, ambiguity, insecurity and even paradox or you can believe that God sent his Spirit of Truth (John 15:26) to guide and lead the followers of Jesus into the whole Truth and nothing but the Truth (John 16:13). If Jesus’ claim that He is the same yesterday, today and forevermore (Hebrews 13:8) is true then it follows that the Holy Spirit is also the same yesterday, today and forevermore. Being the same yesterday, today and forevermore, it is obvious that their words will also be the same yesterday, today and forevermore. The decision the disciples of Jesus made then — that circumcision was not essential for one’s justification — has never changed throughout the history of the church until the present day. It was ratified for all time by Peter when he stood up and said “We are saved, just as they are.” It was one of the most amazing statements any Jew could ever have made in the presence of Gentile believers. A Jew under the Law would rather have said the opposite and in reverse order (“they are saved as we are”), but a Jew who knew God’s grace, as Peter did, would never say that. Salvation for anyone — whether Jew or Gentile — is by God’s grace alone (verse 11) and is by faith alone (verse 9; Galatians 2:16; Ephesians 2”8). It is the same yesterday, today and forevermore.

To declare with absolute certainty that verse 28, by virtue of the word “seemed,” gives us the leeway to learn how to live with uncertainties and paradoxes, is a travesty of the worst kind and a misrepresentation of the character of God the Holy Ghost. In any case, the word “seemed” was not used in reference to the law of circumcision. The controversy over circumcision was already resolved in verses 7 to 11. The word “seemed” was used in reference to the abstaining from meat offered to idols, from blood and from things strangled and from fornication and NOT in reference to circumcision. (Acts 15:29). Surely, Mr. Geyser, fornication is not something to shun because it seems right to us and the Holy Ghost to avoid it. There are many unbelievers who live morally sound and good lives who would tell you that fornication is not a matter of uncertainty. They would tell you outright that it is wrong and a sin. You yourself mentioned the sin of fornication a man commits in his heart when he looks lustfully upon a woman, However, you failed to apply the same unchangeable rule to homosexuals in which case a man looks with lust upon another man and a woman looks with lust upon another woman. Did you have any reservations or uncertainties about the right or wrong of fornication then? No! you suggested with unflinching certainty that fornication was absolutely wrong in the past, is wrong in our present day and will be wrong in the future. Where’s your paradox now? You are obvioulsly not on a journey in reagrd to fornication with the purpose of wrestlng, thinking and talking about it with your fellow pilgrims and to come to a conclusion that it seems right to us and the Holy Ghost that fornication is a sin. By the by, how do you know with certainty that fornication is a sin? You and I know it is a sin because Jesus Christ tells us so in his Word (Matthew 5:28). If his words, in one particular place in Scripture, leaves no room for uncertainty why should his words do so in other places in Scripture? If there’s no paradox in his words in one place in Scripture why should there be any in another place?

If  your spirituality is built on a foundation of uncertainties and paradoxes and God’s Word is so much of a mystery to you that you can only say “I do not know,” then you will of necessity seek other extra biblical avenues to find some kind of affirmation of God’s presence. When biblical faith which “is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1) is replaced by visible and tangible little affirmations such as icons and music you are not busying yourself with God and his will but with downright idolatry.

1) Romans and Syrophonecians and Samaritans.” (Brian McLaren, The Secret Message of Jesus: Uncovering the Truth that could change everything (Nashville: Thomas Nelson’s W Publishing Group, 1006), page 74 & 94).